That's exactly what I am. Because at this moment, there is nothing I want more in all the world than to be the centre of someone's world. I need just this one thing. Nothing more. I need to be needed. I need to know that there is someone who cannot stand the thought of me hurting, or crying myself to sleep. This world is filled with people who could not care less. I just need one person to care.

I don't want to put my needs aside for someone else. I want to cry and be held. What is wrong with needing that?

I'm tired of being told that I am not important, in so many different ways. I am tired of being pushed aside and ignored when I am hurting. Yes, this sounds selfish. Maybe it is. But I need just this one thing.

I could scream at the top of my lungs and not be heard. Do you know how that feels? That helplessness, when you realize you could rail with all your might, and the faces nearest you would only turn away; do you know what that feels like? To be told by someone that your pain is not as important as their own?

You love me whole, but I am broken. Who is there to love me now?

Pure and simple, that is exactly what joy is. Pure, unadulterated happiness.

There once was a time, many days ago, when I could not tell you the last time my heart felt so happy it could burst. The last time my spirit felt as light and as free as the sunlight and the wind. But ask me now, I can tell you, and a smile would appear readily on my lips. I am happy now. I was happy then, last week; the week I spent at my grandparents' house. I sat in the kitchen, at a small wooden kitchen table, in a house that I had thoroughly known since my childhood, and walked through halls that my little feet had once stamped through.

To be with those who you love, and who love you back is a blessed, blessed thing.

There is a kind of infinite beauty in selflessness, in putting aside your immediate need and deeming the need of another more important in that moment. That is the kind of action that facilitates trust, and friendship, and a sense of awe in those that observe this act of kindness.

There is beauty in acknowledging the efforts of others, though they may not have produced the effects that you desired; in viewing the situation from their eyes and seeing the effort they put into an action.

We are rushed, in this world, we are hurried people, and we need not be, for it is ruining us. We would be more human, more connected, more at ease with the world around us if we stopped to take notice of the little people--and by this I mean, everyone that we deem unimportant;because we are all guilty of this--and to see what they might need.

I do not do this often enough.

There are times for words, and there are times when words should come after.

In moments when you are filled with emotion, you often find yourself sorting through words in your brain, trying to frame the real time event into a story. Maybe this helps you to digest the events unfolding, or maybe it just helps you to separate yourself from them, as if the pain or uncertainty in these moments are far too raw, too fresh, to be consumed without this prior preparation. But there are times for words, and there are times when words should come after.

In that moment when you inexplicably break down into tears that cannot be managed or hidden, but instead turn into body-wracking sobs, and you are enfolded into a lovely pair of warm, solid arms, there is no room for words. So no one asks you why you are crying, no one asks you to explain and process the permeating emotion flowing through your core; they let you feel. Because there is a time for words, and there is a time when words should come after.

That is love. And that is respect. It is respect for another person's right to experience and sift through their pain in silence, in their own time, and in their own way, without demanding an explanation. It is the willingness to be their comforter, without encroaching on their right to grieve.