PROLOGUE
THE BEGINNING
A MODERN DAY PRINCESS FINDS HER PRINCE
CHARMING
(2ND installment)
Sometimes a story begins long
before the characters are aware they are involved in a life-altering
experience. So it is with the story of
Scruggs and Samantha.
Long before they
came into my life to alter its trajectory, events were happening around me
foreshadowing the possibility of a sad end to my fairytale Cinderella marriage
to my Prince Charming. Maybe then, a
short history of my Cinderella story will help you understand how life can get
in the way of happy endings.
My Prince Charming
came to me when I was in my late thirties, my children mostly raised and
gone. He came in the guise of a handsome
criminal defense lawyer, and I was a prosecutor.
Like the plot of most love stories, we were separated by the demands of
our professions. But, even though we came from opposite sides of the criminal
justice system, the sparks flew between us.
We couldn’t help ourselves, though both of us were reticent at first to
cross the professional lines of prosecutor and defense lawyer.
We were lucky; my fairy godmother came in the guise of a nosy supervisor
who noticed the sparks between the prince and me whenever we met at the counsel
table. Had she not mentioned it to me, I
never would have had the courage to cross the courtroom and ask him to lunch.
Once started, the
trajectory of our love affair was virtually a straight line from our first
date. Within a year I joined his defense
firm, and within a year after that we were married. Our life was the perfect modern-day
Cinderella and Prince Charming marriage.
Our love was conceived in respect, nurtured by trust, and cemented with
communication. With little or no effort
I became the perfect New Millennium Cinderella with a successful marriage; a
flourishing law practice; a home filled with animals and love; and, best of
all, I had a perfect husband who asked only that I love him.
But life is not
simple, even for Prince Charming and Cinderella. There is a toll extracted with the passage of
time. Marriage partners grow and evolve,
interests change, and emotional and physical challenges become like grit in a
gearbox, all of it making it harder for the partners to balance the demands of
their professional lives with their families and their own needs. Sometimes things slip quietly away—no one
even aware they are gone until it is too late.
Seventeen years
into my perfect marriage and partnership, everything began to slip away as our
lives began to spiral out of control. I
lost my way as a criminal defense lawyer, and my confidence was in tatters—the
price paid for too many losses. My
prince’s strong body began fail, his spine destroyed from too many landings and
take-offs from carriers during his reckless youth as a Navy fighter pilot. Then, I lost too many who were close to me,
leading me to shut out of my life the man I loved most—afraid I would lose him,
too, if I loved him too much. In return,
I became invisible to my Prince Charming.
It wasn’t his
fault. I shut him out, refusing to speak
of the unbearable pain I was suffering.
Nothing had prepared me to face the horrible emotional and physical toll
that was extracted during a time when so many were taken from me. Talking about my pain only made it worse, so
silence became my refuge.
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