You stay safe, You love. You survive. You laugh and cry and struggle and sometimes you fail and sometimes you succeed. You Push.

I realize that life is risks. It’s acknowledging the past but looking forward. It’s taking a chance that we willmake mistakes but believing that we all deserve to be forgiven.

Life is life. You choose to live it or you do not.

And I realize that's the difference. I realize that I still have everything to lose. The possibility of my sister and Elias and Catcher and my future. I'd lose sunrises and stars and the feel of Catcher's heat against my lips. I'd miss the taste of snow and the smell of the first flower of spring. I'd miss laughing and crying and all the moments in between.

There is a child - a baby - who long since kicked off her blankets. Her skin is ashen and her mouth open in a perpetual yet silent scream. She isn't old enough to roll over, to sit up, to climb. So she lies there kicking her fat legs against the footboard of the crib, eternally calling for her mother. For food. For flesh.

And I wonder if that's what my scars really are: proof that I've put myself back together again.

It’s not always about tomorrow and the day after that—what we achieve over the years and how we leave the world. Sometimes it’s about today.

I can’t compare the lives I could have lived. One would have been comfort and security. But the other …” She sighs. “It was the most love and the most pain and the most wonder I could have ever known.