are your matches damp too?

I read this from Like Water For Chocolate by Laura Esquivel and I think it's nice. Dr. John Brown, one of the characters, said this to Tita.

Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves, just as in the experiment, we need oxygen and a candle to help. In this case, the oxygen, for example, would come from the breath of the person of the one you love; the candle would be any kind of food, music, caress, word or sound that engenders the explosion that lights one of the matches. For a moment, we are dazzled by an intense emotion. A pleasant warmth grows within us, fading slowly as time goes by, until a new explosion comes along to revive it.

Each person has to discover what will set off those explosions in order to live, since the combustion that occurs when one of them is ignited is what nourishes the soul. That fire, in short, is its food. If one doesn't find out in time what will set off these explosions, the box of matches dampens, and not a single match will ever be lighted. If that happens, the soul flees from the body and goes to wander among the deepest shades., trying in vain to find food to nourish itself, unaware that only the body it left behind, cold and defenseless, is capable of providing that food.

That's why it's important to keep your distance from people who have frigid breath. Just their presence can burn out the most intense fire, with results we're familiar with. If we stay a good distance away from those people, it's easier to protect ourselves from being extinguished.

There are many ways to dry out a box damp matches, but you can be sure, there is a cure. You must, of course, take care to light the matches one at a time. If a powerful emotion should ignite them all at once, they would produce a splendor so dazzling that it would illuminate far beyond what we can normally see; and then a brilliant tunnel would appear before our eyes, revealing the path we forgot the moment we were born and summoning us to regain the divine origin we had lost. The soul ever long to return to the place from which it came, leaving the body lifeless.

My matches have been ignited but ironically, the one who ignited it was also the one who extinguished it and now, it's damp. It's damp but something is trying to ignite it once more. But no, I won't let it. When my matches become iginited again, I want to be able to take care of it, not letting anyone extinguish it anymore. But for now I can't. I've just been burnt and the wounds are just starting to heal. I wouldn't want to burn once more for the same person who burnt me before.