Everyone is a screwup, really.

Everyone has flaws. Everyone makes mistakes. And I would have to assume that everyone finds themselves, sometimes, in that place where your flaws have taken over — where you’re surrounded by tangles of your mistakes and being a good person again seems impossible.

I’m in my place.

In my place, all I wanted was to love people and, okay, make them love me — but I threw that away because it was easier to do what I wanted, when I wanted to do it. Restraint is a fragile thing and once you decide to trash it, it’s not so easy to bring it back.

In my place, my whole identity came from working hard and being quietly good at what I did, but I threw that away for brashness and over-confidence and speaking before I thought.

Friendships. Family. Work. Relationships. School. When you’ve compromised everything in your life, at least to some degree, it would seem like you’ve failed.

But you haven’t. I haven’t. Because the point is to learn.

And sometimes, the only way you’re going to learn is to trash everything.

The only way you’re going to get brave and do new things is to lose all the old ones.

The only way you’re going to realize you don’t know everything is to see that you know nothing.

The only way you’re going to stop doing stupid things is to realize how much you lost while you were doing them.

It would be nice to be perfect, but that’s not what you got.

Instead, you’re alive.