Fairytales

I was seventeen and drunk on life, dreams, and the excitement of love.  My mind was never here on earth.  Neither was my heart.  I was constantly dreaming.  You could find me on the corner of cloud nine and heaven.  I remember my first year being away from my family.  I was outside of my dorms talking to my daddy on the phone.  I'm not exactly sure what our conversation consist of, but I know it was on the topic of love.  If you know me, you know that I share every emotion, concerns, and details of my life with my daddy.  This day was one of those days where the conversation went deep.  Again, I'm not sure what exactly was said by me, but I must have been hanging out in the clouds because the statement my father made brought me down to reality real quick.  This statement will ring in my heart till the day I pass.  This is what he said, "Erica, you are just in love with the idea of being in love".  Hmmm....I have never been told that before, nor have I ever heard it been said.  My daddy had a point.  I had experienced love at this point in my life, but it was never what I truly imagined it to be.  I had always held out hope for the fairytale kind of life with a love that sustained me and made me float above ground.  But did that kind of love and life really exist?  Had I been fooled by Cinderella?  Was there really a prince charming and a castle?  Was it love that I was after, or just the idea of it?

I was having a conversation with a friend the other day, and without meaning to, I blurted out "I no longer believe in fairy tales" and without my consent, tears just began to stream down my face as the confession suddenly became a harsh truth.  It was as if the words left my mouth and slapped me in the face and made me realize the cold hard reality of it all.  Fairy tales do not exist.  Being good is no longer good enough.  Giving your all sometimes doesn't cut it, and loving with all you have might not be adequate for the given situation.  So I am faced with this question, "Is it worth it".  This heart of mine is too fragile to continue to hold out for hope that is not there.  Life has run it's course at full speed ahead and without asking permission, stole the joy and excitement right out of me.  Sometimes, I feel as if I'm as cold as a rock.  I have felt this way once before in my life.  I was in ninth grade, and I remember being at the alter pleading to God that he would make my heart warm again.  It was a long process, and that prayer had been prayed many times over before I felt life come back to me.  I do not enjoy this feeling because I become so numb to my emotions.  So what do I do in this situation??  I look for inspiration.  I read my Bible, I look up quotes, I cling to people who can give me wise counsel.  Today, I thought back to one of my favorite quotes by none other than Sylvester Stallone in the lastest Rocky Balboa movie.

“The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place, and I don’t care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it.
You, me, or nobody, is gonna hit as hard as life.

But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get it and keep moving forward.
How much you can take and keep moving forward.
That’s how winning is done ! Now if you know what you’re worth, then go out and get what you’re worth.
But ya gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers,
saying you ain’t where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody ! Cowards do that, and that ain’t you!”.

WOW!!  I felt like Mr. Balboa was talking straight to me!!  So...I write all this to say...Maybe fairy tales don't exist.  Maybe I followed the idea of love to the point that I fell right off the edge of a cliff.   But...in all this...life is still good.  God is still God.  I am forgiven, and there is still hope.  If you're reading this and you have been discouraged such as I, please know that there is still fight in you.  Yeah...life sucks.  It isn't fair at times, and it sometimes kicks the H-E-Double Hockey Sticks out of us, but in the words of Rocky Balboa, "It ain't about how hard ya hit.  It's about how hard you can get it and keep moving forward.  That's how winning is done"