To be defined by love.

I'm late to the game in finding Meg Fee's beautiful blog, the wild and wily ways of a brunette bombshell, but nonetheless, found it I did. And it is beautiful. She has a way with words that I only dream of and her soul-searching posts capture the essence of what so many of us twenty-somethings are going through.

She also has a love of quotes that matches my own.
In reading through her blog, I came across this quote by Zelda Fitzgerald:

I don't want to live. I want to love first, and live incidentally.

Normally a quote about love and life would instantly pull at me, but not this one. And, my reaction when I read it caught me off guard: I don't like this. I don't want to live incidentally in a world that is consumed first and foremost by love. I want to live. And love. I want to love my life and the pieces that make it a whole, but I don't want it to be controlled by love, whether that be the searching of love, the finding or the maintaining. I want the two to go hand-in-hand, and above all, I want to live my life in whatever way makes me the happiest. I want love, but I don't want to be defined by that love.

I want to be defined by me.