Never Give Up On Your Fairy Tale

Young, jaded, unsure.

Feeling hopeless, like love was a massively out of reach star. Unattainable. Even though I never doubted it's existence, I doubted my ability to hold it. An ex-boyfriend, my longest term and someone who's thoughts I still valued at that point, told me I was wasting my time, that fairy tales don't come true.

Years later, no soulmate found, far more jaded, I complained good-naturedly to my friend about the man I had been seeing. Something about his likeness to a suffocating squid or maybe the fact that I just wasn't tremendously interested in the man. I remember so vividly being told that my expectations were too high. I should be happy to have found someone good, and to stop looking for something that didn't exist.

Probably, they were both right. For them, for others, perhaps. I held on, though. I refused to settle or give up. Not because I grew up with love-struck parents, or had had some epic love and lost it, and therefore knew it to be true. No, none of that. I just didn't give up because my heart wouldn't let me. I refused to cave, to gather up my heart and hand it to someone just okay. Or good enough. Everyone pushed to me expect mediocrity in love and relationships, to settle down and just plain settle. I could have and almost did. Several times.

And then, I threw a pile of words out into the ether, a plea of sorts or a beacon. A Craigslist personal ad, back when they existed, frowned upon as they were. My helpless romantic heart thought maybe he'd be out there, and he'd read these words as pieces of my soul and he'd find me. I laughed at myself, cried when it seemed so impossible. It wasn't working, and maybe I was wrong all along to swim against the tide of mediocrity. Maybe the rest of the world, in their boring decent marriages to people they merely tolerate, had it right. Maybe I was silly, wrong, out of my mind. A silly girl with a silly notion of what love and life could be.

And then.

And then, he burst into my inbox, my heart, my life, like the starlight we came from. Full up on love ready to give to me. Made for me alone. It is a whirlwind worthy of novels, and may one day be. We fit together like the strangest of puzzle pieces, giving where the other took and falling so incredibly in love it hurt. It hurt in all the ways the fairy tale ending would like you to believe – and believe you should!

We sit in our house, six and a half years later with our two children and our big dreams, and imagine what would have happened if I had settled. If I had taken the advice of so many around me, if I had seen the examples I grew up with and settled.

I remember the girl I was, before I met the man I would love with absolute abandon. She was young and alone, a single mother who depended on herself and her handful of friends. A girl who watched her parents' marriage dissolve for miserable years before a divorce that smashed her teenage years to bits. A girl who had once believed in the heart of a boy who dashed her faith in love and herself until she wasn't sure she'd ever trust again. This girl turned woman had no idea how to truly love, be loved, or share love.

She was told she talked too much, wanted too much, felt too deeply, was too much. And then, with the very words that everyone said were too much, she slipped her soul out into the universe and into the heart of the very best man she'd never known. And it all spilled forth from there, with magical words and promises and dreams and love in a cascading river of acceptance.

It has never ceased, only grown through the years. There is nothing perfect about either of us, both deeply flawed humans full of scars and damage and baggage. And we share it all, messy and awful and awe inspiring. We never pretend to be anything other than we are, together, and that is exactly how we both want the other. There are no pretenses, no filters, no games. We always make it through, come back together and finish thoughts, share dreams superficial and deep, build houses and homes together, and raise children who might really get to see what love can be.

So never give up on your fairy tale.