My Dear Fiona - Chapter 31 Winter Solstice at Maeshowe

I always thought my life would be like the novels I liked to read when I was a teenager, where the heroine’s life was a constantly unfolding drama, replete with emotionally charged moments and anchored in the importance of her actions, where every meaningful event was anticipated well in advance and everything turned out more or less as planned.

Finding you was supposed to be a glorious professional moment, and I daydreamed of basking in the glory of compliments and approval, and savoring the pith of a prestigious career which would be undeniably earned.

And then I found you.

There is nothing more disorienting than a dream come true: all your struggles, your planning, your entire focus, is thus brought to its end. 

Nobody thinks through what they want to do with that fulfilled dream, because unconsciously we don’t believe it would happen.

It never looks like you planned. It feels so alien from your cherished vision you can barely recognize it and it changes you, in ways opposite from what you’d expect. It opens you to the sudden revelation you do not know what you’re doing, and you didn’t when you were sure of your goals either, and the terrifying clarity that life is not what you thought.