And They Lived . . .

by Steven Salvatore

a whole additional layer of bullshit I do not pay tuition to endure.

People like me rarely get the storybook ending.

“You don’t have to have anything figured out right now. Or ever.”

binch. I see what you did there, and while I don’t like it, I respect it.”

If there are so many possibilities when I create something, how do I know if I’m choosing the right story line?”

What gets me is that ‘happily ever after’ is not even the important part of that line. The important part is ignored.” “Which is what?” I ask, a bit breathless. He pauses and points to three words on the page: And they lived.

Bedtime stories start, “Once upon a time” but nobody says the quiet part out loud: that happily ever after is a lie and the real story begins long after the end once the reluctant hero learns love is complicated and easy to admit in the dark once the lights go out and nobody can hear the sounds of your heart beating

My brain is a constant maelstrom, and it’s becoming hard to separate my stories and anxieties.

But there’s always this tiny peach pit of nerves in my stomach when I meet new people. How do I know if they’re cool or if they’re MAGA hat–wearing bigots? Or worse, secret MAGA hat collectors.”

I don’t know what to say because I don’t know how to talk about myself without using words like ogre or blob.

“Ladies,” Benny says. “I have no parents coming this weekend, so I’d really love to find a man on this holiest of weekends.” “You have more men than the Republican party,” Chloe says.

“Have you actually talked to him?” Jack asks. “Had an honest conversation?” Benny stares at him blankly. “Does not compute.”

I’ll never be enough. I’m useless and miserable, and I hate every square inch of the skin I wear. I want to rip it off and start over, slip into anything else, be anyone else as long as I’m not me. Because I am nothing. I’m not beautiful or handsome. I’m not skinny. I’m not someone worthy of love. I am nothing.

Because I am disgusting and disgusted with myself I overeat. Because what’s the point? I’m fat, a word that grows teeth and bites me every time I stuff my face with carbs.

When I look in the mirror, I see something hideous, something so deformed that I don’t recognize it, and it haunts me.

He takes a deep breath. “Oftentimes, those thoughts are your body wanting to experience relief. It doesn’t mean you actually want to die.” “I don’t.” I barely choke that out as my bottom lip trembles. “I just don’t want to be in pain anymore.

“But most of the time, it really hurt to just have to look in the mirror at all because I never saw what I wanted.

No answer? That seems to fly in the face of literally everything I’ve ever known. Everybody rushes to label every little part of themselves. “Isn’t that how we make sense of the world?” “Who is we?” he asks. “I’m talking about you.

“Yeah, it kills me to love him, but loving him was the best thing that’s ever happened to me, even though I wasn’t enough for him. Big surprise,” I mutter. “The hating him part sucks, even though I don’t actually hate him. But I have to because if I don’t hate him, I wouldn’t be able to focus on anything but how I wasn’t enough. But even if I could turn off the love part, it wouldn’t negate the pain.

loving somebody is a wonderful thing, and being loved by somebody is a beautiful feeling, and you should be allowed to feel joy among the pain.

you are enough for you.”

I have a lot of work to do on myself and for myself, to love myself, and maybe this is the perfect time to start.

One of the other things Sweatervest suggested was asking my friends to check in on me. Opening up to them. Being vulnerable. It’s an exercise in building trust, even though I think it could end horribly. But I’m trying my best.

Maybe it was never about finding a love to fulfill me but rather taking the risk and loving myself?

I’d be lying if I said I’m not worried about her. Residual love, I guess. Is that what happens after a break-up, friend or lover? Will there always be a residue of what was?

“I really wish I didn’t love him, but I think I’m starting to realize that if he can’t love me the way I need him to, then it’s better that he leave me alone.”

Say what I will about her; she’ll always have a piece of me. Or she did, once, and we share a history that allows us to know pieces of the other.

I’m not trying to find my way. I’ve been there all along. It’s been other people who have made me question myself. Made me think I wasn’t exactly who I am. Others’ expectations and perceptions became my own. Well, fuck that.

She doesn’t say anything at first. Then, she adds, “I wish I knew how it ends for us.” It’s not an apology, nowhere near one. But I’m starting to think that I don’t need one. “I don’t think the ending is important,” I say. “It’s what we do on the way there.”

“Perhaps we can mend old wounds,” the Prince said, holding his love in his hands. “Wounds that seem to have no point of infliction aside from hate or unreason.”

Isn’t it better to love than punish those who love?”

I feel a calm I haven’t felt in a long, long time. I exhale. It’s over. I did it. And I lived.

It’s funny how so many of us struggle with the same stuff: feeling like we’re not enough. Not good enough to be loved. Not beautiful enough to be worthy. Not talented enough to be accomplished. Not significant enough to feel important or seen. Without the proper words to tell another that we love them, that we hate them, that we something-in-between them, that they hurt us when they think they love us.

Fairy tales are nice because they paint a rosy picture of love: Meet, sing a cute song, and bam! Marriage. But that’s not love. That’s fantasy. This? Facing the hard, gritty shit together, realizing you can survive the trials on your own, yet don’t need to because someone is willing to hold your hand as you grow? That, I think, is real love.

“I want to be the best version of myself for you, and right now, I’m a work in progress. I feel like I’m in a growth spurt.” He grabs my hand. “Me too. Grow together?” I squeeze his hand back. “Grow together.”

Over time, I realized that no man will ever be perfect, that love doesn’t develop overnight, that it’s something that has to be tended to daily, and that there are no princes or knights or happy endings. There is only here and now. I’m learning every single day how to love myself, the skin and body I’m in, and that it’s okay to be a work in progress.

Once upon a time, Jack and I were two people who were sort of lost when we met, found ways to love ourselves, and then each other. And then lived.