Magic, Love & Happy Endings

I would like to recant my previous statement that there isn't magic in my life. I've been thinking about it, and I've decided that there is actually quite a bit of magic in the world. Because love is magic.

I mentioned a few posts ago that I have been working on an autobiographical series of essays on finding love. It isn't really an autobiography, because it doesn't talk about horses, or theater, or one of the hundreds of other things over the course my life that have shaped me into the woman I've become. Instead it follows just one important facet of my life: my quest to find the fairy tale love I had always dreamed of.

David expressed some curiosity about why he'd never been shown these little stories; after all, weren't they about him? To which I replied, "You're the happy ending, but you're not the only chapter." I think he decided he didn't need to read them, after all, but I do hope that when they are finished he will, as it my most personal work - and perhaps some of the best.

But writing these stories have given me a lot of time to think and consider the concept of love, the very heart of it. And I think it is as close to magic as one can come. Shortly after David and I started dating, I told him, "This is it. This is the kind of love they write stories about."

When you grow up in a world full of fairy tales and romantic comedies, you get sort of a flawed perception of love. You're going to fall in love with the boy next door, with your best guy friend, with the football star, and live happily ever after. It'll be easy. It'll be perfect. You're going to meet the love of your life at 15 years old, get married young, and start a family. You won't have to worry about money or work or anything, because when you're in love, nothing else matters.

Yeah, I really did think these things. And I know I'm not the only one. Even in high school, when I was dating absolutely the wrong guy for me, trying desperately to make it work, because I loved the idea of marrying your high school sweetheart. It took a long time for me to realize that you aren't the same person at 16 that you are at 21, and that you'll want different things and growing up and growing apart is okay.

I really hope that I can have my story published because it is a story that I want to tell. I want to be able to hand it to my own daughter after a break up and say, you aren't alone, and things are going to get better. Because it's that kind of story. I think every young girl will be able to relate to it. In the process of writing it, I have laughed and cried and felt my teenage heartache all over again. And every single word of it is true, I lived it.

I call David my happy ending even though it is a complete misnomer. Its not the end of anything, it is the beginning of something truly beautiful. Is our relationship perfect? Not in the sense that nothing is ever wrong. There are fights, and there are tears, and I know that our life together will not always be easy. But if I had designed what I considered the perfect man, I couldn't have done better than David. He is handsome, and thoughtful, and living proof that the old adage "Nice guys finish last" is bullshit. You will never in your life meet a more kindhearted person. He is funny, endlessly optimistic, and the less than two years that we have been dating have been the happiest and most fun in my life.

And the way I feel about him? Is magic. That I had my heart ripped open in a previous relationship, that I had more emotional bruises than one girl should, and could still take a chance on love is magic. The way I feel when he holds me, or when we kiss, is magic. Slow dancing in my kitchen, walking the dogs, sitting on the couch watching baseball, and knowing that there is nowhere I'd rather be and no one in the world I would rather be with... Love is magic.

And it took 23 years of crushes, and dating, and breaking up, to find it. I'm lucky to have found it so soon, for some it takes much longer, and some may never find it. But I'm hopeful. And that is why this story needs to be told - because it is a story about hope, and love, and magic. And how one ordinary girl from Virginia became the princess of her very own fairytale.