"Happily Ever After".. is that ALL we are after?

I have been struggling here to keep up. I miss the interaction with all of my blog family. I don't think any of you know how much I look forward to reading your posts and commenting. When I don't get to.....Aaaaaggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I say...Agggghhhaaaaaaaaa... I will get caught back up after this next migraine decides to leave. This is the prologue to the last post I wrote, the serious part if you will.. I will share it with you now.

Let us pour a glass of wine (or carry the wine box over) and reflect together shall we?


Where are you with "Happily Ever After"? Are you in it? Are you still searching for it? Given up? Maybe you had it but it got lost along the way.

As a child my only dream was to be happily married with 2.5 kids in a decent home, comfortable and stable. I have never been materialistic, a fact that helps being in the situation I am in now. But were my expectations too low? That certainly was not the mind set of "shooting for the stars" or a "dream big" philosophy, still, I would have been contented.

By all sense of reality then, I was IN my "Happily Ever After" for a time. Would I ever have the chance for another? I had all of those things I thought it would take, but I forgot something along the way, standing still is boring. Not the raising of the kids and the marriage part of it, but the NOT longing for something else, something grander, never to "settle".

I worked so hard to integrate myself into a "normal" family because my home life was anything but. I needed out and I needed to see what family was about, gatherings, helping in times of need, fighting sometimes, but always having a place to go on holidays. It was all a foreign concept, until I married into one and experienced it first hand, and I liked it. I let my world revolve solely around that entity. I was not an "I", I was part of a package, weakly in the background, doing for everyone but me, never saying "NO".

When I said "I need" (something) I really meant "They want"(something), and I bent backward until they got it.

I lost my dreams, I lost my happily ever after and I am right back in the thick of "not normal". I get invited to go to peoples places on special occasions, I went a few times, I felt like I was hi-jacking THEIR family. It also made me miss the concept of a family even more, it's easier on my heart just NOT going, but that takes its toll too. Now faced with everything I have going on, I see the flicker of a dream in the distance. But I turn away, doubting that I am strong enough to crawl to it. After all, I had my chance.

I have learned that in order for it to materialize, "Happily Ever After" has to change, grow and mutate into different things or you will never be fully aware when you are in it. You will be stagnate, taking for granted the very things that compose a great fairy tale to begin with. The "true" happy ending is compiled through the chapters and excerpts "BETWEEN" the pages and dark paragraphs filled with trials and tribulations. All these experiences tie together somehow in one central foundation of hope, faith, love and the ambition for more.

So as I continue to write my fairy tale ending, where I am now doesn't really matter. I have to let it go. In actuality it's all about those "IN BETWEEN" pages and how I compiled them, the good tempered with the bad, and that I kept writing all along, not afraid of the next twist of plot.

So where are you?