“Every fairy tale, it seems, concludes with the bland phrase
"happily ever after." Yet every couple I have ever known would agree
that nothing about marriage is forever happy. There are moments of bliss, to be
sure, and lengthy spans of satisfied companionship. Yet these come at no small
effort, and the girl who reads such fiction dreaming her troubles will end ere
she departs the altar is well advised to seek at once a rational woman to set
her straight.”
~Catherine Gilbert
Hahahahaha… LOVE IT!
So I want to talk about love; that love we
all dream about and all wish upon while staring at the stars. Women, men, we
all picture that perfect one who will
be ours… the one who will understand us… the one who will level us off. We all
imagine that perfect life we are going to have because of that perfect someone
we have found. It’s almost like we want, we expect the fairy tale, because we
are deserving of the fairy tale. So we build up our own fairy tale, and then
search for the Prince (or Princess). When we actually do meet them, we feel we
have been blessed and gifted with our own fairy tale come true…
Do you remember the stories of Cinderella,
Sleeping Beauty and The Swan Princess? As little girls we all wanted those
stories to be our story. Many of us
desperately wanted to spend life in a beautiful castle with a Prince Charming
and live, "happily ever after." And as a mom, although I wish that
fairy tale for my daughter, I have a more realistic spin on the whole “Fairy tale
story”…
The reality is that there is no such thing
as a life without any hardship, challenge and adversity that won’t affect our
happiness. Basing your life on the tales you read while still in grammar school
will absolutely not help you deal with the incessant compromising you have to
do (when reality hit); the adjustments you will have to make and display when
presented with new, unfamiliar situations…
So while I don’t think fairy tales are bad,
I do think we need to set more realistic standards for our daughters. As they
get older, we need to tell the real tales, complete with all the many different
possibilities, outcomes and journeys life can take you on. We need to also let
them know that the true goal is not to find your happily ever after, it’s to
build an ever after with many moments of happiness alongside a few
unplanned but expected disagreements, misunderstandings, silent treatments, and
unexpected blows…
The fact of the matter is if someone had
taken the time to tell me that marriage is no fairy tale, I may in fact have
made different decisions. That - in no way - means that I regret getting
married. To the contrary, I actually believe that a little foresight might have
made us that much better of a wife and husband earlier on. I believe that if I
had gone in with a clearer understanding, not taking happiness for granted, the
journey of marriage (or any relationship for that matter) would have been an
easier ride! Now to play Devil’s advocate, things could have gone differently
also, given a crystal ball. If the 25 year old me had had an accurate picture
of the mere possibilities of what was to come, and the work we both would have
to put in to have our “ever after”. Better yet, if I had
had some insight on what my journey was to be, I might have ripped the bottom
of my dress off, kicked off those pretty shoes, and ran like Usain Bolt in the
opposite direction of the alter - scared shitless, and potentially missing out
on the monumental happies I now have in my life…
Whether your "Ever After" is
happy is pretty much up to you. I have found that most of mine is happy. Is my
life a fairy tale? No, but it is a tale, my tale!
All in all I wasn’t promised a life of
rainbows but my young woman mind believed in the fairy tale of Happily Ever
After. The point is that reality is harsher when you are not prepared…
But today I’m here, working towards my ever
after, feeling blessed and appreciating all my happy moments, while
working through the challenging ones.
This is actually very funny, the more I
read this piece, the more I make corrections and try to rephrase my thoughts
the more I realize that the reality is that I’m glad no one told me, “Rose,
this is going to be the hardest, most challenging endeavour you will ever take
upon,” because of the possibility that I would have missed out on the most
rewarding experience of my life… being married to my amazing love, the hubby.
“I'd rather have
bad times with you, than good times with someone else
I'd rather be beside you in a storm, than safe and warm by myself
I'd rather have hard times together, than to have it easy apart
I'd rather have the one who holds my heart”
I'd rather be beside you in a storm, than safe and warm by myself
I'd rather have hard times together, than to have it easy apart
I'd rather have the one who holds my heart”
~Luther Vandross
To the possibility of EVER AFTER filled with many happy moments…
