my god, look at what we are now

One step.

"Acceptance of one's life has nothing to do with resignation; it does not mean running away from the struggle. On the contrary, it means accepting it as it comes, with all the handicaps of heredity, of suffering, of psychological complexes and injustices."
--Paul Tournier

One step.

"It hurts to let go. Sometimes it seems the harder you try to hold on to something or someone the more it wants to get away. You feel like some kind of criminal for having felt, for having wanted. For having wanted to be wanted. It confuses you, because you think that your feelings were wrong and it makes you feel so small because it's so hard to keep it inside when you let it out and it doesn't come back. You're left so alone that you can't explain. Damn, there's nothing like that, is there? I've been there and you have too. You're nodding your head."
--Henry Rollins

One step.

"Leaving is not enough. You must stay gone. Train your heart like a dog. Change the locks even on the house he's never visited. You lucky, lucky girl. You have an apartment just your size. A bathtub full of tea. A heart the size of Arizona, but not nearly so arid. Don't wish away your cracked past, your crooked toes, your problems are papier mache puppets you made or bought because the vendor at the market was so compelling you just had to have them. You had to have him. And you did. And now you pull down the bridge between your houses, you make him call before he visits, you take a lover for granted, you take a lover who looks at you like maybe you are magic. Make the first bottle you consume in this place a relic. Place it on whatever altar you fashion with a knife and five cranberries. Don't lose too much weight. Stupid girls are always trying to disappear as revenge. And you are not stupid. You loved a man with more hands than a parade of beggars, and here you stand. Heart like a four-poster bed. Heart like a canvas. Heart leaking something so strong they can smell it in the street."
--Frida Kahlo

And another.

"We've all had that fear, that despair of losing someone, or this fierce desire because it's not reciprocated. The less reciprocation there is, the more desire we have."
--Emmanuelle Beart

One step.

"To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow - this is a human offering that can border on miraculous."
--Elizabeth Gilbert

And another.

"Without pain, there would be no suffering; without suffering we would never learn from our mistakes. To make it right, pain and suffering is the key to all windows. Without it, there is no way of life."
--Angelina Jolie

One step.

"And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation."
--Khalil Gibran

And another.

"We're all seeking that special person who is right for us. But if you've been through enough relationships, you begin to suspect there’s no right person, just different flavors of wrong. Why is this? Because you yourself are wrong in some way, and you seek out partners who are wrong in some complementary way. But it takes a lot of living to grow fully into your own wrongness. And it isn't until you finally run up against your deepest demons, your unsolvable problems--the ones that make you truly who you are--that we're ready to find a lifelong mate. Only then do you finally know what you're looking for. You're looking for the wrong person. But not just any wrong person: the right wrong person--someone you lovingly gaze upon and think, 'This is the problem I want to have.'

"I will find that special person who is wrong for me in just the right way.

"Let our scars fall in love."
--Galway Kinnell

And always.