She often looks back and wonders when and how her life ended up like this.  As if there will be one glaring and obvious moment that changed it all.  Knowing full well that the truth is that she changes everyday, that we all do. 

She is a well-educated and intelligent woman.  And yet, she will not give up on the most unrealistic and fictional dream of them all.  She is smarter than she is allowing herself to be, but this is due entirely to the size and functionality of her heart.  She knows full well that her heart is not her emotional center (or anyone's for that matter), that this is merely a symbol and long-standing fiction.  But she does not give up.  She can't.  Because her heart hurts, and she cannot for the life of her figure out why.

She lives an honest life.  She works a 9 to 5 job, and in her own little way she does what she has always wished she could do, she changes the world.  She pays her bills, and cares for her dog, and she loves him.  And yet something is missing, something more than she has always known was not there.  She has lost a lot, but none of those losses explain the overwhelming sense of emptiness, of incompleteness anymore.  She has moved on and she has forgiven many, let go of so much anger and so much regret.  And yet she feels the pangs, the reverberations of the past.

She said once that she was a completer, that she was someone that made others whole.  She sees now that she may have gotten some of that wrong.  She lost...loses... pieces, so many pieces, along the way.  She lives on inside of their souls, those incomplete and broken souls.  And now as time passes she understands the price that she must pay for this.  The completer is both a blessing and a curse.  For she feels their pain, their loss, their regret and vengeance each second of each day.  And it has changed her, slowly, one soul at a time.

Looking back she cannot see it, the moment it all changed, for it never happened all at once.  It just was, and is, and will be. (Forever and) Always.  She feels for them, instead of them, so they don't have to.

So maybe she's not broken, or empty, or lonely.  She feels all of this, all at once, and it is nearly incapacitating, overwhelming, heartbreaking.  And some days she wonders if she can go on, but she knows that she will.  Because this is her life, and this is her purpose, and if she was not this then really what would she be?

A 20-something girl that could have saved the world.

She will be the same person she has always been, or she will die trying.  Die happy and at peace knowing that she never gave up, not on herself, and not on the world.

Because everyone knows this world could use a bit of saving.