Six Interesting Things about Me

Trying to Outrun the Life I Was Handed

Maybe My Happily Ever After Looks Different

I don’t think I’ll ever get my happily ever after.
Not the fairytale kind, anyway. The kind where everything lines up neatly, where love stays, where the past doesn’t keep tapping you on the shoulder like it has unfinished business.

I haven’t lived a life of a saint. I’ve been an addict. I’ve made drastic mistakes—choices I can’t undo, moments I wish I could rewind just to breathe differently. I’ve hurt people. I’ve hurt myself. And sometimes it feels like those things are stamped permanently onto me, like they’re the first thing the world sees when it looks my way.

I was born a poor, white girl in Eastern Kentucky. And I ask myself all the time if that alone wrote the outline of my life before I ever got a chance to hold the pen. If my ending was decided somewhere between generational poverty, limited opportunity, and a system that doesn’t exactly leave room for detours or redemption arcs.

Does where you come from get to decide how far you go?
Does who you used to be cancel out who you’re trying so hard to become?

I try to do good now. I really do. I love deeply. I show up when I can. I feel things intensely, maybe too intensely, but I don’t know how to be halfway about anything that matters. Still, there’s this quiet fear that no matter how much good I stack on top of the bad, the scale will never tip far enough in my favor.

Like I’ve already used up my chances.
Like happiness is something other people inherit, not something I earn.

Sometimes I wonder if “happily ever after” is just another privilege—something reserved for people who started life with a softer landing. People who didn’t have to claw their way out of survival mode before they could even think about dreaming.

And yet… I’m still here.
Still hoping, even when I pretend I’m not.
Still believing, on my bravest days, that maybe my life isn’t a punishment—it’s a process.

Maybe happily ever after doesn’t come wrapped in perfection. Maybe it doesn’t look like stability that never shakes or love that never leaves. Maybe it looks like waking up sober. Like choosing growth when it would be easier to stay bitter. Like learning to forgive yourself even when the world doesn’t.

I don’t know if I’ll get the ending I once imagined.
But I know this: I deserve peace. I deserve love that doesn’t feel like a test. I deserve a life that isn’t defined solely by where I came from or who I was at my worst.

And maybe that’s my rebellion—
believing I’m worthy anyway.