To My Dear High School Sweetheart,
You are indeed dear to me, perhaps one of the most dear persons to me.
Now, although we are high school sweethearts, and also a real committed couple now, we were first middle school sweethearts. We were best friends at first, and I hope to remain best friends with you forever. We were 13-years-old when we first started dating, and we're both almost 19-years-old now.
It still stuns me to wonder where the time went. We have had so many ups and downs together, and it has been truly insane. We have weekly arguments, cheeky pranks, corny compliments, and inside jokes that nobody can ever understand.
Today, what I want to discuss with you is fairy tales.
We grew up when motion pictures were a full-fledged thing. It was a time when movies were about romance, glamor, and sexual freedom. We are the 90's kids, who grew up watching Disney movies, and we all know that a happy ending to a Disney movie is what good singers are to musicals: vital. We grew up being surrounded by a world where everything was supposed to be perfect and fairy tale-like, and that is what we expected out of our real lives, as well.
No, the movies, or songs, or lifestyles did not ruin anything for us, they just taught us how to differentiate between what is on-screen, and what is pertinent to our respective real lives. A lot of times, when people break up with their high school sweethearts, it changes their perspective. They stop believing in love, or in happy endings.
While I do think that a fairy tale can be a myth, I do feel that there are happy endings. You know how the line from one of the Bollywood movies goes,"If the end isn't on a good or happy note, just know that it isn't the end. The movie isn't over yet"? That's what I feel is quite real in our actual lives too.
Sure, we are going to face difficulties, and we won't always have a fairy godmother to help us. We won't always have each other's kiss to wake up from a bad sleep/dream. We won't always have each other to rescue one another from the big towers of disdain and dismay, but what we will have is each other's love and the people who love us so deeply.
We live far apart from each other. Not only are we high-school sweethearts, but long-distance lovers. That only makes our relationship that much stronger. We still have those fights where we feel like it is the end of the world, but we still get back together. We have the long Skype conversations where we almost fall asleep talking and all of the love and cheesiness that comes with them.
Yes, this is not a fairy tale, and I know we had that phase. We both, at some point, knew that our significant other was secretly expecting a fairy tale, and we helped each other through it. We helped each other cope with the flaws and imperfections of each other and our relationship, and taught each other together, that although we don't have a fairy godmother, we do have human mothers who love us and are ready to help us through it all. Although we don't have each other's kiss to wake each other up from a bad dream, we do have a connection that is so much deeper than that. Although we don't have each other every time we are caught in towers of disappointment, we do have our friends, who, when join hands, are as strong as Rapunzel's braid and her prince trying to rescue her. And although we might not always have the power to turn each other's weaknesses into strengths, the truth is that we don't even want to. We accept and understand each other for each other's strengths and weaknesses, and that is all that matters.
Fairy tales will always be an important part of our lives. Superheroes will be as important to you, as romantic novels and movies are to me, but I know that in spite of it all, you will still sit and watch my favorite movie with me, no matter how big of a sob-fest it is. I know that I will still go to watch a new superhero movie with you (#Civil War), and yes, I will crab, and maybe I will fall asleep, too, but I know you will just be glad that we are together.
Always in love with you, busting myths about high school relationships and long distance lovers,
Your high school sweetheart (and so much more)
