True Love

When I was a child I wanted to be in love.  I loved the picture of the prince kissing Snow White and awakening her.  Loving her before he ever really knew her.  I loved the idea of riding off to a beautiful mythical place where people were happy evermore.

I was fed tales of this or that family member who lived to a great age with their heart’s desire and I had vague memories of my own parents kissing and cuddling while I was still young enough to squeeze in between them.

As my parents grew less enchanted with one another I wanted this sort of bliss even more and I was getting to the age when it was encouraged by my culture to seek it. By the age of eighteen I found several people I thought might be prince charming and by twenty I was married.  In our culture that was a vow expected to last a lifetime.

A lifetime when these expectations were set was much shorter than a lifetime now; in fact it was probably half what it is now and marriage was as much for convenience and survival as it was love, maybe even more so.  But I was expected to make this decision at an age when I didn’t really know who I was, let alone what love was and live with it until “death us do part.”

We stuck it out for nearly thirty mostly unhappy years.  United only by this cultural expectation and the children we brought into our lives.  Now that I am three times the age I was when I was married I am much wiser.

Shangri-La exists, but not on some mystical mountain in Tibet, or a mythical castle in Forever More.   It exists within the boundaries of my own understanding and perception. 

I have met love now and it is so much more than I ever dreamed of at the impossibly young age I chose a lifetime companion.  Sometimes I wish I had known then what I know now, but then I think how truly fortunate I am.

Some people live and die without ever knowing true love, but I am not one of those!