Fairy Tales

My whole life I’ve been obsessed with fairy tales; they’ve always been my favorite stories. As a young girl I would feel a thrill hearing the stories about faraway lands where they had princesses, dragons, fairies, and elves. I would dress up and pretend with my dolls; we wouldn’t have tea parties, we would act out my favorite fairy tales. As I got a little older and started devouring books I read all those stories myself.

Then I discovered my favorite author Robin McKinley and all of her retelling of classic fairy tales and the “untold” side of fairy tales. I loved the idea that maybe we didn’t know everything that really happened in each story. The Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson just gave us a basic outline.

Maybe it’s because I’ve read too many fairy stories and enchanted tales, but I think some of those ideals and occurrences sunk deep into my beliefs about life. I knew those stories weren’t true and they didn’t actually happen, but I loved the ideals and the opportunities that those stories presented to each hero and heroine. I think I actually see myself as the heroine in my own life story.

So you can imagine that when at age 18 I met my “prince” of course the most logical thing was to get married right away. I was in love! And he was perfect! (And all those princesses got married at age 18 too didn’t they? Haha…)

Some of my favorite stories are Ella Enchanted, Beauty, (and also the movie Penelope). All of these girls have something in common; they are all under a spell (well the Beast is in Beauty…). And after my “happily ever after” turned into divorce, I, like so many of the other heroines in the stories, fell under a spell. Okay, not really but that’s kind of how life felt when I was severely depressed.  It was as if I was transformed into someone else, and I missed the girl that I used to be before. I was under a dark spell of sadness, loneliness, confusion of what I had done wrong, despair, self-hatred, and wretchedness, and the worst feeling of being beyond caring at all.

In the pivotal moments and climax in these favorite stories of mine, there was always a moment of realization and then the spell was broken. In the story of Beauty and the Beast, there’s the part where the Beast is dying and Belle utters the words, “I love you”. And then the Beast does that weird twisting in the air thing and he’s transformed back into a human! In Ella Enchanted, Ella refuses to obey and goes against her curse because she will not hurt the one she loves. And she also breaks the spell. In the movie Penelope, she’s been trying to break her curse her whole life and it comes with one realization and her saying, “I like myself the way I am!” And poof, she loses the pig nose.

And I very much relate to the Penelope story line. But I’m not convinced that here in the real world, spells (or trials) are broken in an instant. I think it takes time. Maybe the realization will finally hit in an instant but I think there’s a lot of working up to that moment. I know that’s how it was when I finally forgave my ex-husband. It took years and years of forgiving him little by little, piece by piece. And then poof, there was that one miraculous moment where I knew that I had truly 100 percent forgiven him. And I felt changed and I felt free.

So although I’m no longer under the “spell” of depression, I still am under a bit of a spell. I still have the issues or “curses” if you will, of self-hatred and well I’m kinda scared of boys. I don’t really feel like I can really trust anyone. So I’m just wondering, is there going to be that one moment where I can say, “but I like myself the way I am!” I hope so. That’s what I’m working towards right now; although it’s really hard to measure the progress of that. I guess I just try to listen to the part of me that is still there that has been there all along. That kind part of myself that is cheering me on. That part of me that says, “I love you Mary”. I hope I can break this spell soon, cuz I really want to meet my real prince charming! (Not the toad disguised as a prince… yes I just went there!) Hahaha!