Theatrical Muse Reboot - #59 - Happily Ever After
Bullshit, that's what it'd be like.
No, really. There's no such thing as happily ever after. And I don't mean that to mean that people don't deserve good endings or shit like that, but things are always a matter of perspective. First of all, life isn't a fucking fairy tale. I don't care if there are actually fairies in the world, things just do not work that way. You don't get to so save the fucking princess just because it would make a good story. Sometimes you lose, sometimes you miss out, sometimes the hero dies on the doorstep because you really can't actually overcome bloodloss with sheer willpower and the power of love. And it sucks if you're reading a book but that's WHY we read books, to get away from the sheer mundane bullshittery of life in general. So let's say you have some big quest to accomplish. You go through all the castles and kick Toadstool and Bowser in the face and get your princess and come home. Maybe you won't ever have to face something as terrifying as storming a castle that's trying to crush you with its ceiling again, but you're still going to have to go home and share your space and time with another human being. And there is no way to make that, alone, a 'happily ever after'.
People are selfish. They're brilliant and inane and self-sacrificial and brutal and all the good and bad adjectives you could possibly think of all rolled into one horrible and delicious sushi roll. There are going to be days that feel enchanted and there are going to be days that are fucking work. Days where you fight and scream and throw pots and nothing feels right, and let me tell you every single one of those days is going to feel like just as much of a trial and tribulation as the dungeon crawl did. Emotional turmoil is still fucking turmoil, it exhausts you just as much as if you'd been in a fight. Don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise. So while you might have your perfect life with your white picket fence and your two point five kids and your dog and your cat and your goldfish, you are never going to be happy all the time.
Honestly, the very idea of being happy all the time kind of freaks me out. People are meant to have emotions. It is in the peaks and valleys of our lives that we find out who we truly are. When you are full of joy, do you share it? When you are down and out, do you still have a hand to reach out to someone else? That kind of shit. If all you are is riding an even keel all the time, you're not going to go anywhere. Well. Let me correct that metaphor a little bit: the ocean has waves. It is by their motion that anything moves. An ocean without current, without the constant up-and-down of rolling blue, is called becalmed. Alternatively it's called the doldrums. Doldrums, for those of you not inclined to go anywhere near open water, are bad. People used to die in the doldrums, because there'd be no waves to push them along and no wind to slide the boat through the water. Just an endless wasteland of water you can't drink and food you can't get to. Emotionally, we're the same. Without the rollarcoaster there is no progress, and people who have no progress in their hearts atrophy. They die. It is in fact entirely possible to die from a lack of love; babies have. People need affection and they need the experience of highs and lows. Not too many or too extreme, of course, I don't mean that anyone needs to be bipolar, but you need something. Otherwise you're just comfortably numb, in a place where you've forgotten even what comfort feels like. Because you aren't feeling ANYTHING at ALL.
My happily ever after doesn't exist. I'm a rock star with no capacity for longterm commitment and a werewolf who's probably going to die in an explosion of blood one of these days. And that's...okay, actually. I've come to terms with that. I don't want to be numb, so I'd rather go out in a blaze of glory than idle away like a dream differed. Provided, of course, that those don't ALSO explode, I'll get back to you on that one.