Please don't let me down this time, I've come a long way to just fold back into line...

I was talking to a friend tonight about difficult past experiences and she said "If that was what it took, if that is what I had to go through to get to this point...I'd do it all again." I spent some time thinking about that and I decided that there is nothing else I'd rather be able to say 20 years from now than, "if all that was what I had to go through to get to this point, I'd do it all again". My friend Jamie said to me lately that she needs a certain amount of shit to go along with the good in order to really feel alive. I totally agree. I've come to the conclusion that much of the time, things are defined by what they are not. Order is defined by chaos, light defined by dark, peace defined by unrest and in the same way, beauty is defined tragedy. Everything is relative to everything and everyone else and everything has balance. And in 20 years, if I can say, that I would go through all of that life defining "shit" all over again if it meant getting to the place that I am at...I will have achieved more than I have ever imagined.