happy endings

i have never believed in happy endings. fairy tales were absurdities to me, until i began to dig deeper into those tales and soon found that the versions i had been told, the versions which i had grown to hate, were not the original content. for example, in cinderella: after the ball, when the prince is looking for the girl he danced with, one step-sister cuts off her toes and the other one cuts off her heels, in order to fit their feet into the glass slipper. the blood dripping from their stockings causes the prince to realize they are not the one he’s looking for. at the end of the tale, cinderella’s step-sisters are blinded by crows pecking out their eyes.

not exactly the happy ending you remember, is it?

recently i realized the irony of my disbelief in happy endings is that my life is one happy ending after another … i was born with a tumor on my tailbone. the surgeon told my mother that i might never be able to walk. not only was i walking by the time i was 10 months old, but i loved to dance and was in countless ballet recitals … in 2^nd grade i began having numerous bladder infections. the same surgeon that removed the tumor found two cysts on either side of my bladder. he removed the cysts and implanted little tubes to re-connect my bladder to my kidneys. my body didn’t reject the implants, but i had nerve damage from the surgery and now needed to use a catheter many times during the day. i hated the idea of having to do this every day, especially since i needed to use it at school, and would need to be excused from class and go to the nurses office. in 6^th grade a classmate saw me walking from class to the nurse’s office with a bag of my supplies and he told everyone that i had to wear diapers. to this day i’m still not sure if i was able to convince them otherwise. it would take years for me to accept that i had to do this for the rest of my life, and years more for me to be comfortable enough with it that i could tell people about it, and years more than that for my body to correct the damage that had been done. it was only after i became pregnant and carried my children to full term, that my body re-built the muscles it needed, or did something close to miraculous and healed the trauma of that long ago surgery … pregnancy was another miracle in and of itself. due to my health issues i was told there was a chance i wouldn’t be able to have children. i was told this at a very young age, possibly at age 8 when i had bladder surgery. obviously at that time i had other thoughts going through my mind and the notion of never having my own children was not a concern. during my high school years there were many girls who knew they wanted to have children, there were even a few who already had names chosen for them, but i never really saw the point in it. perhaps this was because i wasn’t sure my body could have children, but i think most of my reasoning was because i was more interested in going to college and finding a place to be away from my family, rather than making one of my own.

my world is just chock full of ironic happy endings like this!