How do you know you're alive?

I bleed to know I'm alive.  Every day my heart beats, by lungs pulse, my limbs move, my brain fires.  How come I don't know I'm alive until I bleed?  Some days the sun shines.  Sometimes I laugh.  Most times I don't.  Some days my bones ache.  Sometimes flexing my muscles feels good.  I have just existed every day of my life.

So how come I have to bleed to be alive?  Why does it take a bloodletting for me to ponder the hard questions?  Why do I have to stand on the apex of the fulcrum, teetering one way or the other before I realize that life and the way I feel is important to me?  

I could be what I want or I could just continue.  I can risk or exist.  What do I need?  What do I want?  Where do those two things intersect?  Do they intersect?

Bleeding doesn't have to leave a scar.  Too many choose to let the bleed limit them.  It weakens them to the point they are afraid to reach higher.  I choose not to do that.  When a bone breaks, the process of healing actually makes the bone stronger than before.  That's what the bleed will do for me.  My base will thicken and expand.  I will reach beyond, reach farther than I ever thought I could.  I refuse to be otherwise.  I don't want to exist.  I want to be alive and that is my choice.

I am bone.