But after all, you see, I am not an abandoned house. I am not, in the end, haunted and vacant.

My stairs creak and my windows stick and the walls groan on windy nights, but I am not haunted.

In my humanity, there is beauty.

I have lived, vividly. I have loved, generously. I have cured love with love, and I have been reckless, passionate, brilliant, and ebullient.

I am covered in fingerprints: some hands left bruises, and others I wish would hold me forever. I have been touched and I have been transformed.

I have scars, not mortal wounds. I have scars, and I am alive.

I have lived, madly. I have loved, imperfectly. But I determined to live, and I gave myself to love.

Those who admire me — the woman, the symbol — admire this wild amalgam. Unbeknownst to them, perhaps, they admire this complex, profound collection of scars and beauty, strength and weakness, light and dark. These are not binaries: I am a breathing spectrum.

It’s beautiful, isn’t it? This prism of both shade and radiance?

In my beauty, there is humanity.

Those who love me — the woman, the individual — love this wild composition of warring, coalescing, symphonic thoughts, feelings, memories, experiences. They know intimately the dissonance, the disparity; they know intimately the harmony, the unity. There is no light without dark.

You see, to love me is to know:

I am not an abandoned house, haunted and vacant. No, in the end, I am this: I am a house built of living light.