Funny how the random function of my iPod can just make my thoughts go “that a way”, to steal a turn of phrase. “I See the Light¹” from the “Tangled” soundtrack started playing, and I started thinking about fairy tales. There has been much ink spilled and many photons shed about how Disney ruins little girls, but maybe it’s not really that gender-specific. While it might be argued that Hollywood in general peddles the pernicious idea of “happily ever after”, none of the studios inculcates this idea so universally to people at such a young age.

But if you look at non-Disneyfied fairy tales, very few of them really end “happily ever after”. True, in most of them, the protagonist “wins”, but more often than not, that victory is won by great pain and terrible sacrifice and sometimes overwhelming loss. Fairies and elves always exact some kind of price, which most humans cannot fathom until it’s too late.

I don’t remember exactly when I came to the sober realization that “happily ever after” was never going to happen. Part of it is surely just the inevitable disillusionment of growing into adulthood. Others might point to the disastrous ending of the only serious long-term relationship I’ve ever been involved in. But I think it was when I got stuck in a recurrent pattern of unrequitedness, especially the few rare times I’ve shared how I thought I felt, and was met only with incredulity and silence.

I started thinking about other forms of “happily ever after”. For the longest time, I pondered a “good death”, dying in some glorious battle, like heroes and knights in epic sagas and chivalric romances. But after more time passed, even that seems extremely unlikely. Having seen actual death too many times, it’s hard to imagine it can ever be glorious. To quote another song entirely, “The best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep.”

But that Alan Menken-penned Disney song always gets me, because I remember the times in my life I’ve experienced that clarity, however briefly, and I can’t help but accept that it’s never going to happen again. The last person I’ve ever felt that way about has long ago married, and I try not to wonder too often if she even gives me a thought from time to time.

Sometimes I wallow In the grimness of the times we live in, and I can’t help but feel that all I can really hope for is inevitable loss upon loss, and then endless loneliness until the darkness comes. But the more rational part of me knows that it’s not as terrible as that. “There are no happy endings, because nothing ever ends.”