Beauty

9 years ago I left home and had a whole set of expectations from the world. Among them, I was leaving with a fairy tale about prince charming; he was the one man each girl out there was meant to find at some point and live happily ever after. Furthermore, I left convinced I had found mine…

My story is like any other story; more important to me than other stories but in all other aspects just like yours, only colored differently. What I made out of it could be different; the way we absorb the experiences we have seems to differ more than the experiences themselves. Painfully and slowly I realized that there was no prince charming. It was not from lack of trying because believe me, I did manage to delude myself into his existence for a while. Unreal things fall apart, fairy tales lose their magic, and something marvelous then happens: one starts seeing! The world was always there, I could have asked, I could have observed, I could have...I did not. In long runs I learned that I have my rhythm and that if I wanted to finish, I had to run the way it felt right for me...neither faster, nor slower. And so I am with everything else, learning as I go by in my own way, at my own speed.

I am not sure of what is it that I actually learned. I have not become smarter, that's for sure. Some knowledge and experiences get in the way more than they help. Maybe the only thing that did improve is how well I know myself now, coupled with the increased acceptance of my own imperfections. If as a teenager I thought I was my own Creator who aimed to reach some heavenly perfection, now I know I am humanly imperfect and aim to grow old beautifully with someone just like me: imperfect. 

Fairy tales would make it all easy, they would guarantee a certain outcome, happy preferably. In reality, there are no guarantees...all there is it's a constant interaction between my limited and imperfect self and the world. And that's where the beauty lies.