I want to live the kind of life that scares me breathless now and again.

A life that keeps me on my toes and sneaks up on me and knocks me off balance. One that surprises me and unnerves me and unsettles me in all the best and worst ways. I don't want to live my life in safe corners, with a wall always at my back to steady me and a glass of icy lemon water in my left hand. Because powers above, I truly detest lemon water.

I want my knees to shake a little. I want my feet to hesitate sometimes about the steadiness of the ground ahead, and then to keep walking anyway. I want my hips to lean toward adventure and my tummy to grow accustomed to knots and butterflies. I want my chest to swell with joy and ache with loneliness and collapse and expand and love and long. I want my fingers to fiddle nervously in my pockets while my elbows stick out awkwardly and sharply. I want my shoulders to learn to broaden by default, when the load gets bigger and things look a little heavy. I want to peel my eyelids open and look doubt straight in the face while my lips make promises about being bigger and braver and not backing down. I want to hear the word no and still be able to tell myself yes, a thousand times, yes.

I want to stumble over myself a little in the process. I want to break into a run, and I want it to feel graceless and divine and angry and holy all at once.