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Sonnet 89

“There is an ache in my heart for the imagined beauty of a life I haven’t had, from which I had been locked out, and it never goes away.”

“There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”

when brene brown said “vulnerability is the path back to each other” and bell hooks wrote “cynicism is the great mask of the disappointed and betrayed heart” and amir levine wrote “if you want to take the road to independence and happiness, find the right person to depend on and travel down it with that person” and thich nhat hanh said “you cannot resist loving another person when you really understand them” and barbara l fredrickson wrote “your past moments of love and connection make you lastingly wiser”