Do I or don't I?

I just ate a fortune cookie with the following fortune:

do you believe?
endurance and persistence will be rewarded.

(by the way, my lucky numbers evidently are 1, 5, 10, 40, and 43 - but I digress)

That led me to start thinking about how I used to believe. Deep down I knew that I believed in the "Disney magic". Not in Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. But in the concept of a happy ending... Somewhere along the way, though, I lost that. Well, its not a big secret where and how I lost it, but point is, I lost it. I lost my belief.

So when I read my fortune tonight as I ate that delicious cookie, I started thinking...

Do I believe?

Just a year ago, I'd have emphatically said "no".

At that time, even with my budding relationship, I didn't really believe that happy endings were possible. I thought that maybe my belief system for the better part of my life was somehow flawed or wrong. I'd see a movie and at the end I'd all but yell at the screen because happy endings don't happen. The girl really doesn't get the boy and they don't live happily ever after. It just doesn't happen.

But in the past year, so much has changed.

While I still admit that I do still have issues to deal with, I realize that I don't have that inclination to scream at the TV or movie screen. I realize that my faith in my new relationship is growing. I realize that it is possible for someone to love you not because they're related to you and not because they have to, but because they want to. Because they love you for who you are - warts and all. And although I've always loved that way, its a new and foreign concept for me to be loved back that way.

And that has given me hope.

Its given me hope that maybe it is possible to be happy...truly happy. Hope that maybe happy endings are possible.

Right now, I see the light at the end of the tunnel, and I'm starting to really believe deep down that it isn't the light of an on-coming train.

But you know what? Even if happy endings are possible, I don't want my beliefs to be back where they were... Because my beliefs were based in fantasy. They weren't real. Cinderella and Prince Charming are fictional characters. And what I want is to be me. And I want my relationship to be real. And it is. And you know what? If its going to have a happy ending, I want to know that that happy ending is real.

And then, only then, will I be able to really say, for the first time, that yes, I do believe.