the bevolution

She left home with a big heart, fully believing in the fairy tale life she’d always dreamed of. She met someone who said he loved her, and she lived with him for five long years. She vascilated between staying and going, until a chance meeting with a stranger made her understand that staying meant losing something vital in herself, and she left to go find it.

The man she found next seemed to serindipitously be going where she wanted to go, and she tried to make him take her along. If he did, she knew that life would be everything the fairy tales of her youth had promised. The prince had other plans, however, and soon continued on without her.

The next man was kind and loving, and treated her like a princess. She didn’t think she was a princess, but she rewrote the story and crowned him the new prince. Somehow, being treated like Beauty made her feel more like the beast. After a year of failing to be who he wanted her to be, and him failing to want who she actually was, she gave up and walked away.

What was she doing wrong? Fifteen years had passed since she left home; she was a woman now, she could take care of herself. But she still didn’t know who ‘herself’ was. It seemed she had missed some fundamental life lessons the first time around and she wanted to learn them.

So, she ended her career, sold her home, relinguished all of her belongings, moved back with her parents, filed for bankruptcy, and restarted from zero. More intentional this time, she documented her journey and searched for the lessons she had missed.

When fifteen more years had passed, she was surprised to reread the story of her second try:

She left home with a big heart, fully believing in the fairy tale life she’d always dreamed of. She met someone who said he loved her, and she lived with him for five long years. She vascilated between staying and going, until a chance meeting with a stranger made her understand that staying meant losing something vital in herself, and she left to go find it.

The man she found next seemed to serindipitously be going where she wanted to go, and she tried to make him take her along. If he did, she knew that life would be everything the fairy tales of her youth had promised. The prince had other plans, however, and soon continued on without her.

The next man was kind and loving, and treated her like a princess. She told him she wasn’t a princess, and he said he would love her anyway. After a year of failing to be who he wanted her to be, and him failing to want who she actually was, she gave up and walked away, proud that this time there was no beast – although he certainly did try to come back to life at the end, there was no place for him anymore.

The choices she made led her to mostly the same places, but this time she treated herself with the love and compassion she had learned to give others and the result was very different. She thrived in her career, found a new home, realized she didn’t need many belongings, she lived near family, took control of her finances, and continued on, knowing that the investment she had made in herself would pay dividends for the rest of her life – alone or otherwise.