Finding Eden

by Mia Sheridan

Sometimes it seemed so much of the beauty in life resulted from the ugly. And how did you make sense of such things? How could you be thankful for something when so much suffering was necessary to bring it to you? Or was that the very thing that defined real beauty–light after darkness? And maybe that was the whole point. If you constantly sought beauty in the most obvious places, in only the brightest of circumstances, perhaps you weren't really looking for it at all.

And I thought to myself, even though life could be horrifying and earth-shattering, terrible and tragic, it was also filled with moments of breathtaking beauty. And sometimes you just had to laugh.

"We all attach things to our hearts, the things we value, the things we need, the things that make us who we are. But maybe . . . maybe it's only when our hearts are broken, that those things can fall inside.

Because people defined by bitterness end up destroying themselves from the inside out, and eventually they destroy everyone who tries to love them, too. That's not going to be us."