Happily Ever After has finally been beaten out of me.
It only took forty years and multiple loves, entanglements, mistakes, and Oh-Shit-I’m-Being-Weird-Again situations, but I made it.
It’s not as dire as it may sound to those of us who’ve been raised on Disney movies and romance novels.
The death of Happily Ever After means being able to appreciate each day with someone for what it is, rather than constantly grasping for Is This It? Is this The One? Are there babies and an engagement ring in my future? Will I finally get to update my relationship status on Facebook?
It means enjoying the person for who they are rather than what your relationship might be in the future. It means getting to know someone without mentally redecorating their apartment in case you move in one day.
I don’t think life meant to drag my Happily Ever After into a back alley and shoot it, I think life meant to show me how to surrender. How to take things as they come. How to be present in the moment-to-moment of each experience without regretting the past or grasping for a particular future.
When we love someone, it’s natural to want that love to last forever.
And, really, it does.
If I love you once, I will love you for the duration. A corner of my heart is annexed to you and you get to live there forever, like it or not.
I was joking the other day that I need to expand the physical mass of my heart because it’s running out of corners.
He replied, “Good thing your heart is infinite.”
Our hearts are infinite. There is no limit to the possibilities, up to and including Happily Ever After. Some of us do meet that person and choose to keep showing up and loving them until this mortal coil is shuffled, however imperfect and wounded it feels. Some of us have even mastered enough of this human existence to love with ease and pure joy.
Since I want Happily Right The Eff Now, I’m pulling the plug on Happily Ever After.
Because there is no past, there is no future, and my heart has more corners than I could hope to fill in this lifetime.
