Happily ever after

When you’re little, they tell you stories that end in ‘happily ever after’. Maybe, once upon a time, there was such a thing as ‘happily ever after’, but in the here and now reality of twenty-first century America there is no ‘happily ever after’ – just the here and now, which may be happy but may also be sad, painful, terrifying or boring.

Instead of spending our time waiting for ‘happily ever after’ we have to learn to accept and what’s more appreciate the moment.

At age seventeen, the first time I kissed the man who would be my husband I felt a rush of emotion, an overwhelming surety that he was my ‘happily ever after’ – the last man I would ever kiss, the man I would spend the rest of my life loving.

At age twenty-eight, finding myself left behind in his past, I had no hope for the future. I had no hope for the moment. For nearly three years, I held my breath. I didn’t move, I barely existed. I remained there, waiting for life to come back, for the path to the happily ever after I’d been promised to be unblocked.

Now, at age thirty, I am learning that there are other paths to other futures, but that no knight in shining armor is going to come and scoop me up and carry me off on his white stallion along one of those paths. I have to choose one and then take the steps myself. I have to carry my own weight and make my way to the next story of my life. It might not be a fairy tale, but there are plenty of other stories in the world which are better suited to a mature woman than fairy tales.

When I was seventeen, I had my fairy tale. When I was twenty eight, my fairy tale came to an end. I could be angry, or hateful or hurt. I’ve been all of those things, as a matter of fact. Now, I’m ready to close the cover on that story of my life and open a new one. It may last for a year or ten years or twenty. I won’t make the mistake of assuming that it will never end and therefore take the middle part for granted; each part of the story is important and precious. I don’t know how many stories I will have while I am here on this earth, or how long any of them will be. I do, however, know now that there is no forever – there is only now. Make the most of it.