And What Came After

Once in a while, it happens: two people meet, fall madly in love and live happily ever after.

Once in a while.

And then there's the rest of the time, where two people meet and fall in love and wait, and wait, and wait for a happy ever after that never comes.

When I was a little girl, the couples I knew always found happy ever after. Now, I realize that the pages i loved so much were merely shielding me from the harsh, bitter truth: that Rapunzel's hair was never the same when it started to grow again, so that her prince eventually left her to look for a girl with prettier hair; or that the Beast, who went back to his human form because of Beauty's love, got transformed back to a beast because he had a difficult time shedding away his beastly ways; or that Cinderella, having broken free from being a slave to her stepsisters virtually all her life, left her prince and became a women's rights activist in some obscure land (the prince had turned out to be even more oppressive than the ugly old maids in her former home, you see).

Happy ever after turned out to be just another fairy tale, after all. Tsk, tsk.

Bummer.

And so, now, people who greet newly-married couples "congratulations" are actually muttering "good luck" under their breaths. A girl who announces her upcoming wedding gets greeted by frowning, knowing looks and unsolicited advice to "think it over first." Those who have been there and found their way out (and it's amazing just how high their percentage has become, just try asking around) no longer bite back their cynical opinions on the great M-- word.

It's most probably because they've discovered that there were still pages and pages that came after the endings--or supposed endings--of the fairy tales they'd read as children.