The Problem with Forever

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

“I always knew you’d be beautiful one day.”

“I just never thought I’d get to see how beautiful you’d become.”

Words were not the enemy or the monster under my bed, but they held such power over me. They were like the ghost of a loved one, forever haunting me.

“She understands that if I have to pick between you two, it’s not going to be her.”

People show you what they want you to see. You have to remember that.”

My second kiss was just as amazing as the first, but it was different after a few seconds.

We’d been separated. But we had never really been apart.

The old copy of The Velveteen Rabbit rested between us.

Love was the swelling, hopeful feeling in my chest every time I saw him. Love was the way I could forget about everything when I was with him. Love was the catch in my breath when he looked at me in his intense way. Love was the gasp he could draw out of me with the simplest of touches. Love was the way I could…I could be myself around him, know that I didn’t need to be perfect or worry about what he was thinking, because he accepted me. And all of that?

Forever was something we all took for granted, but the problem with forever was that it really didn’t exist.

Because of him and all that he sacrificed to make sure I was safe, I’m able to get up every morning in my own bed. Because of him, I have a second chance at life.

“What is REAL?” the Velveteen Rabbit asked the Skin Horse one day. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?” “Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.” “Does it hurt?” asked the Velveteen Rabbit. “Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.” “It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand. But once you are Real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.”

It lasts for forever.

“I’m real.”

Those two words. I’m real. No one else might have gotten the significance of them, but I knew they meant the world.

Being real could hurt. Being loved could hurt.

“I might’ve saved you all those years ago, but now you’ve saved me.”

The past never went away and it was not designed to do so.

My past was a part of me and it molded who I was today, but it was not the sum of who I was to become. It did not control me.