Happy Endings

I often think about the time my mother told me a bedtime story about fishes. There were good fishes and bad fishes, and the story ended with these good fishes winning over this one other fish who was apparently bad - so he ended up alone, in a dark and lonely creek. I felt so bad for him, that I asked my mother to end the story with a happy ending. She replied, that this was already a happy ending, and I pointed out that it wasn't for that one fish. So she made up a redemption arc for that fish, and everything ended happily - so I slept peacefully.

I've always been a sucker for happy endings, since as long as I can remember. I'm twenty-one now, but somewhere inside I'm still that child, looking for all sad endings to be rewritten, but life doesn't work that way. I can't ask my mother to write a better ending for the times I lost the friends I loved, I can't ask her to shield me from the chaos and pathos deaths of loved ones inflict on one's soul, and I can't ask her to save everyone who suffers. Because she can't, no one can. Life doesn't work that way.

But how do I learn to live in a world where there are no true happy endings, only moments. Moments of joy and love and hope, found only to be lost. How do I accept this and still find joy?

'Cause there are no happy endings, all the fairy tales are a lie - tales of a world that isn't ours, one that can only exist in imagination. All we can have are moments of happiness - times when love fills your complete being, times when your laughter makes you forget all the harsh realities, and moments when the world seems full of hope and positivity.

But nowadays, all I do is think about loss. I stay afraid that all that I love will soon be gone, and I'd be left broken and lonely. I darkly anticipate death coming out of the shadows, and taking away the ones I love, in a blink of my eye, leaving me incapable of doing anything to stop it - I dread the tomorrows I'd have to face, when this inevitable happens. I become afraid that my friends would move into another life, leaving me behind, grieving and longing for the forever I imagined.

I don't know how to live in a world without happy endings, I don't know how to live in the moment. These realities are too harsh for this vulnerable and gentle heart of mine - all it wants is for hope and positivity to be true. But with every new turn life takes, my childhood beliefs get shattered even more. And I know that's how life goes, this is how the world is. I just don't know how to accept this version of the world, one so different from the one I imagined and wanted. I don't know how to live in this world - one with no happy endings.