Forever
It’s a theme of my life not to choose. This place or that one? Settled or free? Single or stuck?
I’ve said that when there is a fork in the road, I always pick the wrong way. My sister and I had a choose-your-own-adventure Cinderella storybook when we were kids, and I have referenced it many times in my life.
Basically, if there’s a choice to be made about anything real or seemingly permanent, I will look back and forth FOREVER until I’m out of time and rushed into choosing the wrong answer, or frozen by indecision, I choose nothing. Sometimes that feels safest.
My “fairytale” has gone something like this…
She just knew that the prince wouldn’t want anything else to do with her after he saw her trip, so she left and did not go back for the slipper.
But in the carriage, her mind was reeling and she was sure that she had made the wrong choice. So they turned around and went back for it, but on the way her carriage was ambushed, and she instead immediately fell head over heels for the carriage thief.
He was cute and he had long hair, and she just knew that he was actually a nice person, even though it didn’t seem like it, and she was sure that she could help him. The horses ran away, and because he was just a lowly thief, she got a second job and tried to help him pay the owners so that he wouldn’t have to go to jail….
You know what, I won’t bore you with all the details. But after that, everything caught on fire, and 1,000 years later in a faraway land, she found a true prince in herself. Not the end.
[It should be noted that this fairytale is loosely fictional, and not actually about any one of my carriage thieves, but a melange of them and their best attributes.]
Maybe it’s my distaste for permanence that has shaped this. Maybe it’s the constant festering of the idea that the other path would have been better. I don’t have any tattoos solely because the idea of forever even in this sense seems ridiculous to me.
How could I possibly know how I’ll feel about this magnolia tree on the back of my calf in twenty years? And to you, friendly suitor, I should obviously say the same. And to you, every tiny town in America, I should say the same?
To live in indecision always will either bring me to all the exact right places because I waited for the sure sign, or it will leave me forever homeless and alone, and funnily enough neither of these really sound so bad. Choice: all please? Or wait, none. No, uggghhhhh… I quit.
I can’t help myself. I chose this as the picture here because I think most of you see this, and get fuzzy feelings in your sweet hearts [ha! literally in your confectionary little heart-shapes].
And good for you! That sounds easier.
But for me, it feels like my feet are glued to the floor. “I need you.” Geez! “Forever.” Seems like a lot. Cling much? Don’t you think you’ll really be fine though? Without me? You will, and now that you’ve given me this suffocating cavity-creator, I believe you’ll have to. Good day, sir.
I’ve been playing a game with these songs. The game is simply to put in the first song that comes to mind after I write the post. This is the first one that I am truly tickled to hand you.
I really love this song, and it does seem to fit the theme. I feel this pretty intensely as a little joy bomb. I’m glad we shared this moment. Thanks for being here, and thank YOU Alicia Keys for being so on fire!
