Here are the pieces of my heart.

I feel like my heart probably resembles this one in a lot of ways.

My heart has been broken, beaten, and bruised. I'm not talking just relationships. I mean life, job, friends, love, on and on I could go.

I think in the past I've been careless with my heart, flippantly carrying it in my hand from place to place, tossing it in my backpack as I encountered the issues in life. So I suppose I have myself to blame for it's current condition.

I am starting to realize that I have gone to the other extreme. Where I used to be careless with my heart, I am now over-protective. Where I used to allow it to take chances, I now keep it hidden from the world, so as not to inflict more damage. I tend to keep it wrapped in 20 lbs of heavy blankets and then locked away in a trunk.

I've done my heart a disservice both ways. So how does one find the balance? I'm not sure I know. I'm not sure I know how to, but I have to try. Because when I locked my heart up, I locked up a part of my great adventurer, I locked away the will to take great chances. I miss those things, I feel like they are suffocating and slowly dying in the isolation booth I have set them in.

So I'm trying to find the balance. I realize that my heart might get smashed to smithereens. I realize there might not be any great adventure, and I am aware that there may never be one great love. But what good will a heart in tact merit me at the end of my life, if it has not seen, if has not done, if it has not lived?

That's a chance I don't want to take....