Belong to me.

"Belonging has always been tough for me."
"I can be your home," he said quietly. "Belong to me."
(from "The Girl Who Chased the Moon" by Sarah Addison Allen)

As I was reading "The Girl Who Chased the Moon," this particular passage stuck with me.

In all the reading I've done -- novels and non-fiction, magazine articles and blog posts -- and in all the television shows and movies and interviews I watch and in all the social media I browse, this seems to be a frequent theme, this wanting to belong somewhere and that belonging just not coming naturally.

Belonging is tough. To belong, you must first make yourself vulnerable, leave yourself wide open to rejection. Vulnerability is terrifying, leaving your feelings exposed when your natural reaction is to keep them well-protected. And those times when you think you belong, only to discover you were mistaken, can be so crushing, you resign yourself to never open yourself up to that kind of risk again, because you decide the loneliness of not belonging hurts less than the sting of being turned away.

But that moment a connection is made...

Oh, the joy to find "your people."

And, most especially, the one who becomes your home.

The one who says "belong to me."