This Lullaby

by Sarah Dessen

What did it feel like, I wondered, to love someone that much? So much that you couldn’t even control yourself when they came close, as if you might just break free of whatever was holding you and throw yourself at them with enough force to easily overwhelm you both.

“And love is needing someone. Love is putting up with someone’s bad qualities because they somehow complete you.”

And all of it came down to one thing: love, or the lack of it. The chances we take, knowing no better, to fall or to stand back and hold ourselves in, protecting our hearts with the tightest of grips.

The fate of your heart is your choice, and no one else gets a vote.”

“Well, it’s true that I have been hurt in my life. Quite a bit. But it’s also true that I have loved, and been loved. And that carries a weight of its own. A greater weight,

But holding people away from you, and denying yourself love, that doesn’t make you strong. If anything, it makes you weaker. Because you’re doing it out of fear.”

Moments, whether they be bad or good. Maybe it’s all the small things—like being guided slowly forward, surely, day after day—that stretch out to strengthen even the most tenuous bond.

Maybe this next time would do the trick. Or maybe not. But unless you stepped into the game, you would never know.

“Maybe, you just misplaced it, you know? It’s been there. But you just haven’t been looking in the right spot. Because lost means forever, it’s gone. But misplaced . . . that means it’s still around, somewhere. Just not where you thought.”

I knew that there were no guarantees. No way of knowing what came next for me, or him, or anybody. Some things don’t last forever, but some things do. Like a good song, or a good book, or a good memory you can take out and unfold in your darkest times, pressing down the corners and peering in close, hoping you still recognize the person you see there.