All That I Hoped Against : Prologue

Once upon a time, a fairy blew her dust in the face of a girl and the girl fell in love a beautiful boy. The boy had a heart of kindness and a uniquely golden soul. The girl watched him, her admiration growing daily. After a time, the boy loved her back. They started a friendship abounding in affection and play. Every day they saw each other was new joy; each night they said goodbye found them both in tears. Very soon they had committed their hearts to each other and, not long after that, their lives. Many promises were made; many quiet warnings from wisdoms learned long ago nudged at the edges of the girl's mind, but she brushed them aside. So swept up was she in the glory of first love and the wonder of the boy that she allowed many things that were once important to her to fall by the wayside. Time passed and the romance grew. The boy and girl soared through the air in a colorful hot air balloon. They rested in the shade of trees and watched the clouds. They kissed each other endlessly. The girl filled a book with adorations of the boy. The boy never stopped praising the girl in her beauty. They formed the perfect plan; marry immediately and run away. A long life of blissful togetherness and, more presently, Europe stretched before them. Early on the boy hesitated and found many reasons to doubt the plan. He shoved these aside, however, determined to make the girl happy and never spoke of them to her. Soon, he was just as enthused about the plan as she. They were racing along toward a life neither of them had ever imagined for themselves but could not wait to start living. They were untouchable; wrapped in each other and laughing at the world as it passed slowly on...
And then, as life generally goes, the girl woke one day with a strange sense of deja vu. She felt oddly like she had felt nearly three years before. She shook it off. But the next morning it was still with her. Over some months she grew to feel strongly like her former self. This very much interrupted her new-er (though by now, not so new) life, being as her former self felt that many things her new-er self was disregarding were, in fact, NOT to be disregarded. And she began to see again. She saw the faults of her beloved boy; faults that she had spent recent years ignoring and smoothing over. She saw her old dreams in all their splendour. She saw reason and wisdom. She saw the folly of path she was hurrying down. She saw herself. And everything changed.
The boy did not come to a similar self-renewal. He remained an advocate of the new plan and continued to ignore the girl's faults and problems. He was crushed when she confessed to him her new (in other words, old) feelings. He saw the life he planned fall to ruins around him and was deeply wounded by her betrayal of trust and failure to fulfill her promises. He felt stupid for trusting her, for baring his soul to her; and especially for overriding his good judgment in order to secure her happiness. He felt great sadness and longing for the girl he used to know and thought he understood. He couldn't see how she could change like that. He didn't know if he could stay with her like this, but he had always sworn to himself that he would never be without her. He didn't know what to do.
The girl was confused. On the one hand, she loved the boy with every fiber of her being. She thought he was the most precious and excellent person in the world. She believed that the best parts of God were inside of this boy. She never wanted to be without him in her life. The thought of not holding his hand, not breathing his smell, not hearing him say "Silly 'ol bear" any time he did something silly, not knowing what he was doing every day was devastating to her. But on the other hand, with her vision clear she could see that there were some discordant, even opposing, differences of worldview and personality between them. When thinking clearly, she was fairly certain that the healthy and right thing to do was to break it off and live her own life, cherishing quietly the hope that they could one day come back together and have the life they imagined, but satisfied if it wasn't to be. But how could she leave him who she loved so dearly and hated to hurt above all other things in the world? She didn't know what to do.

To be Continued.