Romance Junkies Cocktail Hour

Lisa stopped by RJ after hours

Happy hour for me means margaritas. Margarita on the rocks, no salt.

I don't want just any old house tequila either. I want a quality tequila with an amber hue from the oak cask it was aged in. I want a tequila that smells like sunshine and Mexican beaches. Something made from nothing but Blue Agave. If you hand me a bottle with a worm in it, I may or may not crack it over your head. Don't mess with my margaritas.

After a few drinks, we might do what women do and start talking about men. I might even tell you about what happened last year.

When I wrote The Path to Freedom, it wasn't just fiction for me. It was also a way to come to peace with my past. Oddly enough, after I published The Path to Freedom, my past came rushing headlong into the present.

My first boyfriend, the very first, who cheated on me and dumped me for someone else came back to apologize. This relationship had a deep impact on me at sixteen and seriously affected my self-esteem for many, many years. He and I have made peace and salvaged an adult friendship instead of carrying that baggage.

Another boyfriend was the one who married the girl he got together with right after we split up. I won't lie. That left a bit of a dent in my self-esteem as well. Their marriage didn't work out though and she can't forbid him to speak to me anymore so we have a great friendship now.

Then my ex husband showed up. That was the most difficult ghost from my past to deal with. When he asked me if I "wanted a divorce or an annulment" he never gave me a reason and I was too crushed to ask. All I knew was that I had been rejected by someone who vowed to love me forever so there must have been something inherently unlovable about me. I lived under that assumption and the insecurities it created for over sixteen years.

When my ex husband and I finally talked through what had happened to our marriage, sixteen years after the fact, we both discovered that the reasons we divorced were reasons that never existed. It was sad. We were that couple whose story didn't make it past the black moment. I thought he wanted out, he thought I wanted out and neither of us was brave enough to fight like a real hero or heroine might. We'd failed and it turns out we both fought demons because of it. The tragedy of this story is almost Russian.

I can look back now and know that the path these relationships set me on brought me here. I don't think any of those men would fall in love with who I am today (I'm tougher for what I've experienced and have a lot more fight in me) but it is important to me to be able to be friends with them, to make peace with my past.

The simple fact is that I've loved each of them and they've all played a huge part in who and where I am today.

So here's the real story:
I loved passionately and was hurt terribly but I didn't stop loving and eventually found my happily ever after.

The epilogue would go something like this:
In time they all came back and peace was found. Friendship grew from our shared pasts and we carried only the happy memories forward. There was no more baggage.
I loved each of them but none so much as the one I'd finally found. The one who loved me back just as much as I loved him. The one who gave me white roses because he knew I liked them best. The one who supported me in achieving each of my dreams even when I tried to reach them all at the same time. The one who vowed "for better or worse" and proved it.

It was a long time coming, but I found my happily ever after and so will Sarah Stevens.