I used to believe in fairy tales.

When Willie and I got married, I thought love would always be enough. We were young, so in love, and full of dreams of the perfect life we’d build together. But fairy tales don’t tell you about the long nights of loneliness, the slammed doors, the words that cut deeper than any wound. They don’t warn you that love can fade, that two people who once clung to each other could one day feel like strangers in the same home.

For ten years, I cried myself to sleep more nights than I could count.
Willie and I fought over everything—money, the kids, the things left unsaid. He worked late and barely looked at me when he came home. I stopped waiting up for him. I stopped asking how his day was. It hurt too much to reach for someone who no longer reached back.

I tried to be strong for Sarah and Jake, our two beautiful children. I smiled for them, tucked them into bed, and told them stories of love and magic, even as my own heart shattered a little more each day.

Then came the night we both said it—”Maybe we should just get a divorce.”
It hung in the air between us like a prison sentence. We didn’t cry. We didn’t fight. We were just… tired. Tired of hurting. Tired of pretending. The divorce papers sat on the kitchen table for weeks. Neither of us signed them, but neither of us talked about them either. It felt like we were already gone.

Then, one night, everything changed.

Jake collapsed at home. One moment he was laughing, the next, he was burning with fever, barely able to keep his eyes open. Panic surged through me. I screamed for Willie, and together we rushed him to the hospital.

I don’t remember much of that drive—only Willie’s hand gripping mine so tightly it hurt, only the tears blurring my vision, only the prayers tumbling from my lips.
For hours, we sat in the sterile hospital waiting room, afraid to breathe, afraid to hope. And in those long, agonizing hours, I saw Willie again—not the distant man I had spent years fighting with, but the man who had once promised to love me forever. The man who held me when I was scared, who kissed my forehead and told me we’d be okay.

“I don’t want to lose you,” I whispered, barely recognizing my voice.
He looked at me with so much pain in his eyes, and then he broke—right there in my arms, sobbing like he had been holding it in for years. And maybe he had.

That night, Jake got better. And so did we.

We joined a counseling program. We learned to listen again. Willie came home earlier. I stopped shutting him out. We talked about our dreams, our fears, our love—the love we thought we had lost but had only buried under years of pain.
It wasn’t easy. But love isn’t just about the easy days. It’s about fighting for each other when everything feels broken.

A year later, we stood under the old oak tree where he had once asked me to be his forever. This time, when we renewed our vows, I held his hands and whispered, “Forever.”

And this time, I knew we would never let it go again.