I truly believe everything happens for a reason. Maybe not always a reason we understand while we’re standing in the wreckage of what we thought our life was supposed to look like—but a reason nonetheless.
And I’ve learned that two things can be true at the exact same time.
I can be incredibly sad that I’m closing a chapter (yes, the rumors are true. I am now officially divorced. 🤷♀️) I didn’t plan to end, while also being deeply grateful and incredibly excited to turn the page.
I didn’t write this particular ending. If I had been holding the pen, I probably would have written it differently. I would have changed some dialogue, rewritten a few characters, skipped a couple particularly shitty plot twists, and absolutely demanded an explanation from the editor about several questionable creative decisions.
But maybe that’s the thing about life.
We don’t always get to choose how a chapter ends.
We do get to decide whether we keep writing.
And I am.
I’m starting the next chapter—or maybe this is an entirely new book in the series—and something in me believes this storyline is going to be better than anything I could have imagined when I was desperately trying to keep the last one from ending.
Will there be plot twists? Obviously. This is my life. Subtle storytelling has never exactly been the universe’s preferred genre for me.
There will probably be heartbreak. There will be mistakes and growing pains. There will undoubtedly be some trauma and tragedy because, apparently, character development remains committed to its fucking job.
But there will also be laughter.
There will be freedom.
There will be people I haven’t met yet who will somehow become characters I won’t remember how I ever lived without. There will be old villagers who continue walking beside me and new ones who arrive at exactly the right moment. There will be love in forms I haven’t even learned to recognize yet.
And most importantly, there will be me.
Not the version of me someone else needed me to be.
Not the version who stayed because leaving felt like failure.
Not the version who kept rewriting herself to make everyone else more comfortable.
Me.
The loud, loving, complicated, sarcastic, deeply feeling, occasionally inappropriate, beautifully messy woman it took every chapter before this one to create.
A woman who has finally learned that an ending does not erase everything beautiful that happened before it.
It simply means the story is moving.
So yes, I’m grieving.
And yes, I’m excited.
Two things can be true.
I can honor the story that brought me here without living inside it forever. I can love what was, mourn what I thought would be, and still be wildly curious about what comes next.
Because maybe this next story isn’t about starting over at all.
Maybe it’s about finally starting from everything I’ve learned.
Maybe this is the book where I stop trying to survive the plot and actually get to live it.
The one that embodies my spirit, my soul, my ridiculous sense of humor, my enormous capacity to love, and every scar that helped build the woman holding the pen.
And maybe—just maybe—this is the story that changes everything.
The one where cycles end.
Where history gets rewritten.
Where everything I survived becomes something more than pain I carried—it becomes wisdom I pass forward.
The kind of story that doesn’t end when I do.
The kind people tell long after I’m gone.
The kind that gets read for generations.
And for the first time in a very long time, I don’t feel like I know or even need to know how my story ends.
But I am just really fucking excited and ready to keep writing it.
desiree.angelica 