My dreams have never changed. I’ve always aspired to one day live that fairy tale life. I have always envisioned myself living in a home with someone who actually made it feel like a home. It’s the only thing I have ever seriously pursued in my life and honestly the one of the few things I want in my life.

Which can be kind of ironic coming from me. One would say that I once had it all. I had someone that cared about me, someone that made a home feel like a home and I left it. They say you only fall in love once or twice in your life with the people who are meant for you then you lose your chance. Supposedly you wind up living your life alone. I walked away from love, wondering what else is there? Here I am one of the fortunate few who found it on their first try and walked away. I found it when I was sixteen and spent seven years building the platform for all of our dreams to come true.

Then one day I got to wondering what if? What if this wasn’t my life yet? What if I went left instead of right, what would happen? What kind of person would I become? It was the first time in my life I have ever left myself unable to answer a question. My mind was racing asking all these things and there were no answers in sight. I had no idea how the world was outside of the fairy tale I was living in and it started to intrigue me. One day I just wanted to find the answers to all the questions that were racing through my mind.

I walked away from the golden ticket. It wasn’t just a golden ticket, it was The golden ticket. What I had, still to this day, has been everything I’ve dreamt about. I don’t think I realized it then as much as I do now. That none we shared was actually something special. It is something that has set the bar, set the tone, for anyone that has or will walk into my life.

I wake up each and every day with no regrets. What she has taught me, the man she turned me into, has only enhanced and amplified the man I’ve grown to be. The love that we found is the backbone for my everyday life. If it wasn’t for her, and I had just gone left without all the lessons she’s taught me, I would have went left and found a far darker road than the one I’m on now.

Instead, because of her, I’m actually starting to grow into a man. Yeah maybe it’s been small little baby steps, but I’m making significant strides forward into becoming the man I always knew I could be. I guess now in hindsight, I felt like I knew where the right path would take me, what our life was going to be, I could see our future together, Sunday dinners and all, and I didn’t know shit about the path on the left. So one day I went left to find out the type of man I could actually become.

I hope I can speak for everyone I’ve met along the way, and in no way do I mean to sound conceited, but I like to think I’ve turned out to be a pretty cool guy. But who am I to judge. I can finally face the man I see in the mirror. There was no way I would be the man I am today if it wasn’t for the love that we shared and the fairytale we had. I may have lost my golden ticket but I found one in myself that I didn’t know I had.