Happily Ever After Are you familiar with the Greek myth of Baucis and Philemon? It goes like this: Zeus and Hermes were wandering through a town (in disguise, as gods are wont to do) waiting for the townspeople to offer them some hospitality. They were turned down by everyone until they came to Baucis and Philemon's cottage. The couple was poor but generous to the strangers. Zeus and Hermes revealed themselves as gods and had the couple leave the cottage and climb a mountain as the gods had decided to destroy the rest of the town for its lack of hospitality. They caused a great flood but they also turned Baucis and Philemon's cottage into a temple. The couple had 2 requests of the gods: they wanted to be temple guardians and, when one of them died, the other one wanted to go as well so that neither one had to live without the other. Their wishes were granted. They tended the temple for many years and then, one day, they both started turning into trees. They quickly tell each other goodbye and are transformed into an oak tree and a linden tree, with intertwined roots. So the point of the tale was about generosity to strangers but I gravitated towards the together forever part of it. I am something of a romantic and I wanted my life to have the happily ever after! I always hoped that I'd have a Philemon to my Baucis. Someone who I could be with forever and beyond. I thought I'd lost that chance with the divorce. After having been married for so long it was kind of unsettling being alone and not part of a unit. It was hard not to want to be in some kind of situation where I belonged with someone. Even if it was a wrong situation, and I bumbled through a few of those, it was better than being alone. I ended up finding a post-divorce self-help book and the one thing I remember from it was this advice - you have to get used not only to the idea of being alone but the idea that being alone might be your future. And, wow, that was really such good advice! It was a very healthy thing to finally come to terms with being with myself and stop trying to force myself into a relationship because I feared loneliness. I did get to the point where I was comfortable with being alone. But I did also think that I'd had my moment, I did the married/committed relationship thing and maybe this was going to be the rest of my life. Alone, with myself. Preferably with lots of cats, at least. One day at work (I was an MRI technologist in a hospital), I had a patient come up for her scan and she was accompanied by her husband. They were an older couple and she had dementia. It had progressed enough that she had lost the ability to speak but she still knew who her husband was. I got her situated on the scan table and, before I wheeled her into the scan room, she and her husband smiled at each other, held hands and he spoke some words of encouragement and then gave her a kiss. Once I came back out to the workstation and started running the scan, he began talking to me. They had known each other and been friends for years but had married other people. And then, when those people had passed away, they married each other. They hadn't been married for very long before she developed dementia. But he was in this for the long haul and told me that he'd do it all over again, even knowing how things would turn out. They were together, forever, no matter what. Other people have found their Baucis or Philemon. It's still possible I could find mine one day. Or not. And either way is OK. Baucis and Philemon: The Myth of Hospitality and the Gods in Disguise When I first started using Zonelets I had Disqus set up as a commenting system but it looked obnoxiously ugly and I ditched it. Some people are happy to not have blog interaction but I'd love to hear from you if you have any thoughts you want to share! You can respond through my guestbook or email. If you found this link on Discord or the 32-Bit Cafe Discourse, you can message me there or leave a message on my Neocities profile page.