Breathless

On the verge of taking what may be the biggest risk of my life so far, while catching up on blog news, I came across a quote that All My Pretty Ones posted weeks ago. It took my breath away, literally. As in, after reading the last lines, I just sat there not breathing, tears streaming down my face.

Please allow me to reprint the whole thing here:

"Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could."
― Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum LP