{Quicksand} and the Death of a Fairy Tale

The thing about Love is, it’s so close to us, so interconnected to who we are, that sometimes it’s impossible to see it clearly. To figure out what’s real and what’s not. To see whether it’s serving us, helping us grow into who we must become, or hindering us, stifling us and leading us astray.

Sometimes our love-blindness, this inability to see our relationships clearly (or actually look?), continues for so long—too long—that now, things inside us have changed so irreparably, it’s impossible to go back to who we were, to get back what once was. When the fog suddenly clears, we emerge to a new reality, and obligingly, take measure of our inevitable human growth. We realize: the distance between what we are and what we actually have, and what we thought was true, and needed, and important, is now an enormous gulf. A cavern.

Once upon a time does not always proceed in a linear path, through a sun-dappled wood, on a white horse, or with a sword.

You may think you are on solid ground.

Everything is good, everything feels right, true. Normal. You feel happy. Secure. You may feel this way for years, maybe. And then, somehow, something shifts. Subtly. You are hardly aware anything is happening. And now, in one, singular moment, you awaken, and realize: Things are not the way you thought they were. At all.

Where to possibly go from here? You may gaze at your path ahead, wondering which way it will lead you. If I go that way—wait, does that look like quicksand? What about the other way— will that way be better? More solid? Straighter? Will this path, or that path, lead me to where I now know I must go, the place where I can at last be who I must be?

It is impossible to know. Sometimes you need to take that one fateful, fatal step to be able to figure out for certain if it is the right one, or a false one.