When you're young, your heart is filled with (hopefully) love by your parents, friends, guardian, keeper.. etc. And you go out into the world with this filled heart. But you soon learn that a full heart isn't enough to get you by- that soon enough other people will poke at it, puncture it, make it leak a little more each day. And you try to refill it yourself but it seems that the more you pour into it, the harder it is to fill. Each cut and slash making it all the more weaker.

It's hard to protect your own heart. You can withdraw and think that that is the answer but then your heart just hurts even more, underneath the dust of mis-use. Or maybe you forget that you even have a heart and nothing touches you and a little by little you start to die inside.

Or you could hold your heart out for the world to see: imperfect, taped over, half full.. a sad replica of the full heart it used to be. Which way is better? It's hard to say. One way you feel every little thing and the other, well, eventually you start to feel nothing.

So you have to ask yourself which one you'd prefer- to be imperfect and bruised, or empty and dusty.

Maybe there's a middle ground where you protect your heart and yet dare to believe that you can offer it without being punctured, yet again.