When I was young, my mother told me a story about how my father and her met. It was a sunset then, bright oranges and yellows splattered across the sky, where my father spoke about everything that align with what's in my mother's heart: about the world, about the unfairness, about the love.

That was before he became an alcoholic.

My mother told me that it was that moment and many similar to it that made her fall in love with him. My father and her love story was like a fairytale come true. "It's the feeling that somebody knows you from inside out," she spoke once. "One day, you'll find somebody like that, Olivia."

This was what I was looking for in my entire life, in Melanie, in my father, in Jacob and even to an extent, Reese. But more than that, I believed in the love story my mother once told me, where if you gave all your love and trusted the stars, you'll get what you want in the end. Perfect fairytale, perfect hope—but naivety at its finest.

Reality is far from fairytales, far from dreams, far from expectations. Just because you wish it hard doesn't mean you'll get it.

But it's a beautiful lie while it lasts. We all believe in some kind of lie. We like to write a story in our head, expecting ourselves to follow it, while forgetting life is not a story. But nevertheless, we believe that a story for us is written in the stars, that we will have what we want. So we labor, we wish, we dream, we hope—

Until we crash and realize while people hurt us, it's the lie that ultimately broke us.