Fairy Tales Never Surrender

I last messed with this on March 16, 2011. It was written when emotions were running high because of some stuff going on in my life, and it still seems relevant today, worth the repost. I originally shared it on Facebook and now I’m sharing it here on my blog. Enjoy, and I hope it makes you think.

P.S. I dropped the f-bomb, the real one, a few times here. You’ve been warned.

            Life is not a fairy tale. Or so we’ve always been told. I’ve seen for myself that the saying is true, but the why of it is what boggles my mind. There have been circumstances where the central theme of fairy tales, true love, has been in perfect play. The couple was a fairy tale sprung to life, even if their circumstances in the world weren’t the best. They  had each other and that was enough to keep them going. Brace yourself for this one, even though it won’t come as that much of a shock. These couples, whose love and devotion is so beautiful that it draws admiration from those around them, from their children and their children’s spouses, have royally fucked up in one way or another. The fuck up in question is of the variety that breaks a marriage up, destroys a home and a family. This is always tragic and marriage counselors get paid thousands of dollars every year to figure out this next question: Why? Why did their fairy tale love go spiraling out of its natural orbit?

            It all comes down to the choices we make. Life could be a fairy tale with the perfect love, if only we’d let it. Things get in the way. Shit happens and couples buckle under the strain, I’m not disputing it. But in the end, it’s always because they decided they couldn’t take it anymore. It’s because they decided to do the thing that they knew, somewhere in the back of their mind, had the potential to destroy everything they held dear and precious. Relationships are hard. They are work, don’t kid yourself. If they were a walk in the park, the divorce rate wouldn’t be the talk of the town that it has become. They’ve always been difficult. The difference between the past and now is that people have an out when they want it, when things get rough. In the past, it was until death do ye part, and they meant that quite literally. These days, people bolt if things get too hard. They jumped in without much thought in the first place anyway.

            But this is not a commentary about my generation and how nearly none of the people I know were married when they had a baby and the parents rarely ever stay together. It’s a commentary on the choices we make, how we decide to deal with things and go on with life, even though there is shit all over our windshield. The choices we make. It’s not just a pretty saying you can throw out on Facebook to make yourself feel better when you spill coffee on your blouse at work. I mean when it is truly a case of the shit hit the fan and everything is spiraling down towards hell in a hand basket with a nice pretty bow on it. That is the true test of a person.

            Recently, I read a novel called Shadowfever, by Karen Marie Moning. It was the fifth and final installment of the Fever series featuring Mackayla Lane. One of the central characters, a man which Mac is heavily involved with throughout the series, says quite often something about it’s how we go on that defines us. Fictional character or not, those are words of wisdom that I plan to live my life around. It’s the paths we choose, the choices we make. Throughout the entire series, Mac is put through so much shit that a lesser person would have curled up and died on the spot. Not Mac. She kept getting up, she kept on going, even though her world literally fell apart around her. When the love of her life was supposedly dead, she set out on the warpath to seek revenge and take the Dark Book unto herself and completely remake the world, for him, to bring him back. It is a romantic notion, but that doesn’t take away the severity of it. Many authors I’ve read have broached the idea of remaking or just destroying the entire world for a loved one. It makes me think. A love so great, you would be willing to destroy the world, remake it just to bring that person back from the dead? That is a love that you are literally willing to do anything for,  just so long as you keep that person by your side. One series it was a mother and her only son, with the Fever series it was Mac and her true love.

            This is why literature is so important to our society. These ideals are ones that cannot but are being lost every single day. People choose not to care, for one reason or another. They choose to not give a damn what happens to anyone but themselves. It’s all choice.

            We were creatures given free will from whatever creator there may be out there and some of us do not take full advantage of that gift. We fall in line like sheep and accept what there is and do not try to change it, even for someone we really love.

            Choice. It’s choice. Those before us made mistakes and made them intentionally. We do not have to repeat them, if we can learn from them. And that is what I intend to do. I never want to hurt my love the way I’ve seen other people hurt each other. I never want to let my emotions cloud my judgment so far that I cannot see past my own hurt into the lives of those around me.

            Learn from mistakes. Make the choices to go on and make this small existence what I want. Know that it won’t always be perfect, but as long as I am willing to walk through hell and high water for my love, it will be a fairy tale for me. What about you?