anchor.diff:  
   Yet most of all, in the end, I am afraid of being alone.
   
  -I remember those lost years. That seemingly endless vacuum where I simply existed, for lack of any better option. IT was not life, that existence, only a waking death.
  +I remember those lost years. That seemingly endless vacuum where I simply existed, for lack of any better option. It was not life, that existence, only a waking death.
   
   So I keep trying. Keep accumulating more heartbreak, even though every one hurts just a little more than the last, every one leaves one more scar that never quite heals. Sometimes it feels as if it is a race, a desperate sprint against my very own heart, wondering whether I will reach the finish line before it finally gives out and kills me.
   
   Yet I cannot give up. Cannot stop running. Cannot give in to waking nothingness. To simply existing. 
   
  -Even now, after a lifetime of breaking my heart down into so many barely glued together pieces, there is hope. At times I feel I have more to give now than I ever have. Like a _https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kintsugi[kintsugi]_ pot, this heart still holds as much or more than it ever did, and has grown facets and aspects in the breaking that I never even knew were there. Where once was only youthful fantasy and puppy love has now found passion, song, and tenderness I have never felt before.
  +Even now, after a lifetime of breaking my heart down into so many barely glued together pieces, there are fading slivers of hope. At times I feel I have more to give now than I ever have. Like a _https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kintsugi[kintsugi]_ pot, this heart still holds as much or more than it ever did, and has grown facets and aspects in the breaking that I never even knew were there. Where once was only youthful fantasy and puppy love has now found passion, song, and tenderness I have never felt before.
   
  -But does anyone see it? When they see those cracks, do they see gold, or do they see only rotten plaster? Hope seems almost mad in the face of a life with not one success to show, not one moment of real and true love to point to. What do others see when they look at me that drives them away, that I cannot see myself?
  +But does anyone see it? When they see those cracks, do they see gold, or do they see only rotten plaster? Hope seems almost mad in the face of a life with not one success to show, not one moment of real and true love to point to. What do others see when they look at me that drives them away, that I cannot see myself? Is forcing myself to go on in spite of so much pain just another venue for self-destruction?
   
   I do not know. Perhaps I will never know. I can only keep filling and repairing the cracks as best I can and hope that someone among them will see the value in those https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi[imperfections].
   
  
positive.code: 
  I am 34 years old.
  
  34.
  
  I was 31 years old before I had my first relationship. 
  
  31 years old before the first, and so far only woman, to say "I love you" to me.
  
negative.code: ____
  
  
  I have found it difficult to describe to someone what it is even like to be so long without love. People do not believe it. 
  
  Those same people who will tell you with great air of wisdom and authority of the importance of coming to terms with being alone will look in abject disbelief and respond with blank platitudes when I tell them that, for instance, every single romantic pursuit in my 34 years on this planet has ended in heartbreak.
  
  The very notion of what that might feel like seems to so terrify them that they flee into cliche rather than confront the thought. 
  
  I do not judge them for it. I fled myself, in a way. I knew from a very early age that what I wanted more than anything in this world was love, and when more than a decade of my life came and went with only one disappointment and loss after another, I simply gave up for another decade. 
  
  