Ice cold.

To what extent is it a good thing...

... to be cynical?
... to be guarded, emotionally?
... to wear one's heart on one's sleeve?
... to remain at arm's length from those who frighten/challenge you?
... to admit that first impressions are clouded by self-doubt/distrust?
... to indulge in snarkiness?
... to admit to being less than yourself?
... to be honest?
... to change?

I'm fairly level-headed, in my opinion. Yet I have a tendency to take the 'bait,' that same pride-singed reaction as during the middle school years of never turning down a 'dare' in games. Sometimes I forget things... like the fact that not everyone knows me well enough to judge me based upon the sum total of my self and not merely the biting comments and asides. Humor is only funny when it's shared, not when it is exclusive to its originator, isn't it?

At what point do I run the risk of turning my heart into the equivalent of Steve McQueen and his baseball in The Great Escape? Thumping, repetitive, rhythmic... and solitary. Untouched by the sunlight of the greater world. Enclosed within a self-erected (in my case) fortress without windows. There comes a time when acting in the name of self-preservation is little more than miserly, callous even. To protect one's feelings at the expense of others'... I fail to see anything noble in that.

And of this I know I am guilty... often.

The time has arrived to evolve past this immaturity, no matter how deserved the tightly furled petals of original heartbreak may have been... Recovery. Forgiveness. Acceptance. Tenderness. Growth. Spring renewal.

Anais Nin once wrote something - her exact phrasing escapes me, surprisingly - to the extent of 'and the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.'

If the earth is renewing herself, so then should I, no?

It's not love we don't wish
to fall into, but that fear.
this word is not enough but it will
have to do. It's a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go.

- Margaret Atwood, 'Variations on the Word Love'