Love...hate it or love it, but u cant live without it

I spent my teen years like a lot of other teenagers believing the Mills & Boon myth. I too dreamt of a tall dark and handsome stranger sweeping me off my feet one day...and then we'd live happily ever after. Well marriage dispelled me of this notion...not to say I didnt or dont love my man. Is marriage an eye opener or what! I was so hurt to discover that the M&Bs were just lies spun out to ensure commercial success that for years later I had an aversion to anything even remotely romantic. But there lies a hopeless romantic deep within my soul...how much ever I try to deny it...it's just a part of me that I cannot amputate how ever desperately I would like to. I just have a childlike faith in deep abiding and perfect love even though my rational cynical mind says "wow what stupidity...and you actually believe that?!!" Part of me wonders if that perfect love is meant to come only from God and part of me wonders if and even hopes that perfect love exists here on earth among us mere mortals. When I would read fairytales out loud..and come to my favourite happily ever after part...my child would say "Mom there's no happily ever after" and I would be upset. There just was this hope deep inside myself that just wouldn't let go...and I would be so upset that even a child could see through the myth..but I couldn't. So these days, even though I've given up hope on ever having that "perfect" love, I've let myself go. Its like for years I was on this diet of realism and rationalism working out to build up my muscles of cynicism trying to get rid of my extra flab of softness and naivete inside. But now I've decided I need to love myself as I am extra pound of flesh and all. So I've just let myself go. I'm allowing myself to get emotional with beautiful love songs, weep with star crossed lovers, stare in wide eyed wonder at sacrificial perfect love in movies, root for Derek and Meredith to be together against all odds, believe with all my heart with lovers who lose each other only to find each other later in life. I've decided I'm not going to be ashamed of the softness inside of me because this is me. I'm going to let tears run down my face at the sight of passion and love in two people's eyes for each other. I'm going to allow myself to believe in fairytales again....