Middles: by Stsgirlie
Disclaimer: Everything recognizable belongs to Dick Wolf!
She was always comfortable in the middle. Being in the middle meant you had too much of neither one thing nor the other. Being in the middle meant you were balanced. That was why the best times of her life happened when she was middle-aged. She was wise enough to avoid the careless mistakes of her youth, yet naïve enough to believe that things really could be changed. Every year, as she older, she realized that choosing sides once in a while was not such a bad thing. The best decision of her life, starting a relationship with Ben, happened because she strayed from the happy medium between never taking a chance in love and always taking a risk. She stepped out from taking small baby steps in relationships to taking a gigantic leap for a man she'd give up everything for. And he caught her. That's when she realized that while staying in the middle was safe, you never really lived. Life is all about taking risks, and she realizes that now. Now, at the dawn of every New Year, she looks back at the times when she was foolish enough to believe that everything would be perfect as long as you stayed in the middle.