When I feel at peace it is because I have let go. I no longer need to be the director of this life. I am content to sit back until I feel moved to step up. I follow. I listen.

And then, predictably, I misstep. I forget. I get tied up in how things should be instead of observing how they are. I was not made to fight, and so when I do I begin to break.

It’s more than I can take.

But I have a neck. It allows me to look left and then right, up and then down. And I have eyes…

My name used to be Fear.

I walked it, wore it, smelled of it, took it on as myself. I moved through life with hands held up as fists, swinging in the dark with teeth clenched and eyes narrowed. It was my way through. It was how I made it through.

But I didn’t move. I stood still, paralyzed with shame. I was ashamed of what I did, what I was, the words I spoke. And that instant was frozen in time, lived over and over again. It was all I knew…the guilt, the pain. It was all I…

I’ve never been to Boston. I’ve never seen its sights, soaked in the history, walked its streets. I’ve always wanted to, but haven’t yet. And hearing the news yesterday didn’t make me want to stay away, it made me sad, but it didn’t make me afraid.

“Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.” Albert Einstein

And make no mistake, the events at yesterday’s Boston Marathon started with a thought of fear.…

Sometimes I miss my old life. I was breathless, unaware and new. I was forever looking forward, hopeful. I believed in the power of romantic love…that two people can do anything if they commit to love one another forever.

I don’t live there anymore. But sometimes, I miss it.

My teens and twenties were filled up with fantasies that someone (my boyfriend) would complete me. He’d adore me, lavish me with gifts, we’d get married, have babies, I’d be thinner and life would be…