Mumblings on the Happily Ever After

One of my closest friends and I have a lot in common, not least of which is our love of books, in fact we got to know one another through an internet forum dedicated to a particular author.  That said, we both have quite wide ranging tastes and they don't always mesh.

The main example of this is the whole topic of romance fiction and in particular the happily ever after (she finds my obsession with M/M fiction hysterically funny for some reason - save for using the book covers to freak out her 17 year old daughter (who is also by her own choice my half daughter).  Her Aspergers syndrome/Autism means that she doesn't do the whole icky relationship thing and show her a cover with a half naked man on it and she'll run screaming ).

Now whilst my friend is (now - it's not always been that way) the happily married mother of three and I am the cynical single lesbian with a track record on relationships that would raise a few eyebrows, it's actually me that is the secret hopeless romantic who likes the books that finish "and they all lived happily ever after".

I did ask her earlier on if she could explain why... but as she has a toddler, two teenagers, husband, 2 dogs, several cats and a knitting habit worse than my own she could only manage a short summary...

"In a nutshell: cos that's not how life EVER works out, and the end of a book is NOT the end of the story."

Ok, now this is fair enough, and yes I suppose in real life any relationship doesn't just go on forever with no bumps in the road, but I'd like to believe that some relationships will go the distance and everything will work out.  I also know the end of a book isn't the end of the story, well it is, unless the author can be pestered for more - but, hell, I'm the one who in unguarded moments can find myself sitting there suddenly wondering 'I wonder what so and so from whatever book is doing now' and then let my imagination drift and before I know it in my mind I've a picture of "what happened next"... and you know what, it's nearly always a happy ending - see told you, hopeless romantic.

The thing is, 99% of the time, I can keep myself grounded to knowing that fiction is fiction, and whilst real life may occasionally smack you in the fact with the unexpected I am happy for my reading to be, well, if not by genre at least by the standards of my life, fantasy.....  Maybe this is what gives me a glimmer of hope that one day I will find a happily ever after of my own.