Fairy-tales and Drama

All the old stories talk of forbidden love and drastic measures, many end in a tragic twist of fate, the rest tell of defeated triumphs resulting in the "happily ever after" that we've all heard about, but here and now in the real world of a modern college girl in America, nothing goes the way the stories always go. Even after I moved to Paris and fell in love, something nearly every young American lady dreams of, I didn't wind up married in a country house in Provence. I wouldn't be happy if I lived in a country house with a husband right now, but that's what we're told we ought to want.
I promised myself that I would go to college and earn a degree. I vowed to study theatre and attempt to become a serious actress on a big stage. I refused to naively take the emotional path when it meant compromising my educational satisfaction, not at this age and not at a point in time when a degree becomes more and more valuable and necessary with each passing day. So, I ask myself, why is it that I'm questioning my choice to leave the city of lights and the people I grew to love?
Sometimes, when I see a friend's little brother or any kindergardener wearing a t-shirt with a truck on it, I just start crying. When there's a commercial or something on TV showing a kid learning to tie his shoes or ride a two-wheeler with great pride, the tears are guaranteed to fall. The fact that these things will probably happen for my "big, strong, tough guy" without me scares me. If I ever have any of my own children, I don't think I'll ever be able to let them move out after so much more than just a year together.
I know that I still could move back and work or study. but the schools there aren't what I want, and I'll hate myself if I get older and older but never earn a degree or go to a big audition or anything. There aren't any guarantees, ever, of success, especially not in the performance realm, but I'll hate myself if I never try. Still, it's something I think about all the time. I'm certain that I think about it far too much.
I also think about Marko all the time. It's been almost a year since I moved away, but it seems like a decade sometimes. On some days, many weeks pass within the time span of an hour. I'm not quite sure how that works, but it happens. I don't even have any want or need to settle down at any point in the foreseeable future, I just wish we could be together. I've resented the Atlantic Ocean and the thousands of miles it spans between here and Europe ever since I landed in Boston last July, and even though I told myself all of last summer and the first term of college that I would get over it and move on, that never happened. Going back to Paris in November only made my desire to be there much stronger, and returning to my parents' house and college was much more difficult than I had anticipated. I don't even know what I want, not in the grand scheme of things, I just know that being without him isn't it.
The crying and the breakdowns are never shown or talked about much in all the stories and fairy-tales, at least not the ones where the couple survives to be together in the end. No one ever mentions how hopeless you can feel and how horrible it is not to know if or when you'll get to see each other again. They say it's hard, but they never tell you how much...