"When you are young, you think it will be solved by love. But it never is."

"Everything snapped into focus. It's one of those unforgettable moments that happen as a child, when you discover that all along the world has been betraying you."
-Nicole Krauss, The History of Love


This isn't the best or even my favorite quote from that book, which I reread this week and which is one of my favorites, but it's how I feel these days. As if the world has betrayed me. "Be kind to people" it said. So I was kind. "Give" it said. So I gave. "Trust" it said. So I trusted. And now, "We've so easily fooled you. How could you have listened to us?" And with a broken heart, I'm forced to see the error of my ways. To wonder, also, how I ever could have listened to such an unreliable source.

I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I want or need. And that's scary. I don't know how to recover from the blows I've received. I don't know how to deal the blows that are necessary to fight back. As always, I want to run away, but that has never worked, why should I think it would work now? So what is my solution? I don't know. Or maybe I don't want to know. Probably the latter.

I'm balancing too many stones. Half have fallen already. I suspect the rest are whispering conspiratorially, waiting for the moment when I least expect them to bolt. But deep down I also suspect it's my hands that will revolt in the end.