Dear Life..

Dear Life,

I have borrowed you for 24 years now. You have always been there even though I may not have always seen you. You are the reason I have risen each morning, the reason I have fallen asleep each day without fear of not waking up the next. Yes, you are the very reason I breathe.

You have not always been good to me. You have brought me pain and grief and in leaving others you have brought me loss. You have brought me challenges greater than I could ever have imagined or feared. You have made me doubt myself and often my fear has been greater than my faith. Together we have perhaps done things we are not proud of, or that, with hindsight, we see were foolish. You must have seen similar mistakes in others many times before, Life, but you remained passive, allowing me to experience it all for myself for better or worse. Sometimes I want to thank you for the experiences, for who they have allowed me to become but other times I look upon you with such sadness and regret that I cannot feel you here anymore.

I feel that I have allowed circumstances to silence you. I have ignored you. You have been here but you have been asleep and I have not made an effort to wake you. I have seen only the clouds even when the sun was just out of sight. I have focused on the darkness and in doing so have failed to see your light. I have forgotten that you are only borrowed and that each second I have with you is precious.

Forgive me, Life 

Forgive me for not seeing you, truly seeing you. Forgive me for not taking a moment every day to breathe you in. Forgive me for almost begrudging you for being here whilst at the same time not wanting you to go. Forgive me for not loving every second, every inch, every scent of you. Without you, I would not have experienced much pain but equally I would not have experienced much joy. Forgive me for not accepting that each emotion, good and bad, is evidence that you are here and reside within me. Forgive me for forgetting that you are here and for forgetting that I am alive.

I am alive.

So, please Life, accept my apology. Awaken from your slumber. Give me strength on the days I have none. I can not promise you that I will never wish things were different or that things had gone better or been done differently. But I can promise that I will actively try to fill myself from the top of my head to the tips of my toes with you. I will find things for us to do that make me happy, even just the small things. I will thank you often, for deciding to stay with me another day and I will not take you for granted. I will remember just how beautiful you are and how temporary. I will love you, warts and all, so that on the day, hopefully many years from now, when you decide you are going to leave me, we will part as old friends and I will gracefully let you go knowing that I loved you as much as I could.

But for now life, lets LIVE.
xxxx