Some part of me wants to be a part of a fairy tale beginning. (Romance in modern fairy tales – the kind I know – is all about beginnings. It tells us the story of how hard it was for true love to bring the beautiful, blessed young people together, not how they stayed together or what it was like when things settled down. Never the ending; endings are depressing. The relationship between the two lovers cannot end until both are dead and gone – think Romeo and Juliet – and modern Romance doesn’t dare face that harsh reality. We want a happy ending, so we end with a happy beginning.) I want to be thrust by the fates into the arms of my lover and in the face of adversity stay by their side so that we can be together forever. I want to come home to find that someone has run away from the insurmountable obstacles on every side of the life they want to leave behind and into the loving safety of my arms, to share their life with me. I want to have someone in my life who is actually willing to give up everything if it means staying with me, and to love them as deeply. I believe I am this willing, but I am more and more prone to belive that the world is not; that although the world likes the idea of this ideal, they choose to value things other than the people they love above all else. I want to meet someone who just fits so perfectly with me and the person I want to be and who feels the same and is willing to take the steps with me to make our lives as one. I want to be the sort of person that another person can love right away, that is worth giving something up for, that fills a hole in someone special’s heart and life. I want to be special to someone and to share myself with someone special to me.
Another part of me wants to be logical and think things through. I want to find someone who can make a commitment and stick to it; someone I don’t have to worry about losing when some new, special thing or person comes along. I want to find someone who values their own life enough not to sacrifice what is important to them about it for another person. I want my lover to be someone who in the face of insurmountable obstacles on every side of the life they want to leave behind and an easy out available sticks with what they have committed to from the beginning, even if that means giving up – well – me. I want the world to live up to its own standards. I want to know what happens after the beginning. If it is so easy that we don’t even have to mention it (ie: they live happy, full lives until a ripe old age when they die simultaneously in their sleep,) and the beginning is so difficult, why can’t there be some way around the beginning and right into the middle? If they don’t mention what comed after because it is even more difficult, then I want to know because I don’t want to be taken totally by surprise. So many people have come and gone in this world, surely someone has had the chance to figure out how to do this right. I hope.
I am frustrated right now because for the fourth time, though the first time in over two and a half years, I have had someone consent to marry me only to back out. I do not want to say that in any of these cases the end was the fault of one party or another; relationships are not about either party, but between them. What I can say about them is that in each of them what I can see in retrospect (flawed vision at best; people speak of 20/20 hindsight, but mine is infinitely worse – and in this case, where the other persons involved are so vital to the whole truth, I can see only half at most,) is that perhaps they were begun too soon or without properly being considered. Clearly under further consideration each was ended. Clearly it is not yet time for me to have been married. Then again, how could I have known this at the time without losing faith in what keeps them on my mind every day of my life; Love? If I lose faith in love I can examine situations to see if they hold up or make sense according to what I have been taught. If I hold onto love, so much greater possibility seems to open up to me; the world is a safer, brighter place and my place in it is secure – I am a lover at the very least. Then again, as I have said, if I hold onto my faith in love as this “something greater” I may end up in situations that do not turn out to be as secure as they seemed at first. Is it worth it to believe in love? I hope so.
I am allowed to hope because no one can take that from me but myself. I am allowed to hope because I let myself hope. I hope because I want to believe that this is not all for nowt. That at the very least a level of contentment will continue in the world, and at the best it will rise up and conquer us all. I hope I am not always to be alone, and at the same time I hope that I will remain complete in my singularity. I hope that my dreams will come true and my goals will be achieved and that everyone else also fully realizes their dreams and ambitions to the extent that they have chosen. Without this, would not desire be empty from every heart and mind and spirit on and beyond this world?
…
Sometimes I think I think such large thoughts to distract me from the smaller, more immediate ones. Like “I’m tired” and “I want to be with her” and “now and forever” and “I want her to have all the things she hopes for in her life” and “I’m willing to give up my selfish desire to make her a part of my life in order to allow her greater fulfillment and happiness” … things like that. I need to wake up early and iron a shirt for work; I haven’t been looking very good lately and it hurts my self image. I don’t know what to do with myself. I don’t think I know how to live my life. There are some things I want that I can’t just reach out and take with both hands and never let go; some things aren’t up to me alone and most of what I long for seems to be tied up in other people wanting the same things I do.
Maybe I’m wrong again. About so much more than I ever realized.
