One of my favorite books as a kid was The Ordinary Princess by MM Kaye.
A pragmatic fairy godmother ‘curses’ a princess with being ordinary. But in reality, it’s actually a gift.
Said Princess happens to be Sleeping Beauty’s great-great-great granddaughter. She finds herself a King dressed in rags (without amnesia) and after a little misunderstanding everything works out.
7 year old me was onto something. Good girl.
17 year old me got sucked into romance novels. The fairy tales for adults. Way too much conflict, but the sex was good.
I’m going to use one of my 3 wishes to pass on extraordinary, that apple is definitely tainted. Or just rotten.
I wish instead for a calm, peaceful love that nobody wants to read about and I don’t feel compelled to write about.
Once upon a time me telling tales about my dating history sounded a lot like “I met this guy we went on a few dates then suddenly its 5 years later we aren’t fucking anymore and we’re arguing because he can’t find the socks I just washed and I realize I never want to wash his socks again or fuck him ever. The end.”
That is how it went. I didn’t actively participate in choosing a partner or even dictating the relationship.
Someone found me and I just stayed, way past when I ought to have stayed. Lost my 20’s and my 30’s like that.
Fairy tale princesses that get rescued from whatever (usually in my case the previous bad relationship) end up just blindly loving the next prince.
For what? Showing up? What is he bringing to the table?
My princes became assholes that couldn’t do their own laundry and Cinderella is back in domestic servitude.
Happily never after that. Fairy godmama showed up late to the ball and she was a little drunk.
Next chapter.
Once upon a time I had my one true love. He was on his way to save me once when I was trapped in Mordor, or Forks.
He was living in Mexico, looking for work in Ontario so he could rescue me.
But then the girl he’d been banging told him she was both 20 and pregnant.
And then they lived happily ever after. Just had another kid too.
Kinda grossed me out that he messaged me a few days before she gave birth to tell me he loved me.
Fairy godmama got back into the schnapps.
We are all inundated with fairy tale love from such a young age.
I taught myself to read using Disney read-a-long records.
Someday my prince will come huh?
My best friend in grade two used to read a battered copy of Grimm’s Brothers to me every day on our way to school. I would help her with the words she didn’t know. I was never good at reading aloud but my vocabulary was strong and I won a spelling bee or two. We made a good pair. Still do.
My alone time at home was spent with my mother’s collection of My Book House Books. They were hers when she was little. I still have them. I escaped in there, tucked in my closet with a reading lamp and a bowl of Cheerios reading about the Snow Queen.
My parents love the fuck out of each other and always have. I don’t ever recall seeing them fight. That is part of it too. Imagine hearing as a child that your dad saw your mom and knew she was the one he was going to marry. There were no talking mice or magical lions or witches or poisoned apples or unicorns, those are really my folks, folks.
So ya. I thought it would happen for me.
I still do.
So, after my 20’s and 30’s came my 40’s and I turned a lot of pages. Sat back, spent some quality time alone out in Narnia, met some wolves who spoke in tongues. I figured out how I love and I started liking myself and being me. And lo there were others like me and I dated some of them and then…
And no and then.
Problem is I’d left a trail of breadcrumbs that led me back to the same type of men I equated with home.
Those houses were built with hay and sticks and were not meant to last.
I was hungry. There was cake.
The last handful of times I have tried to date anyone in the last few years read like fables about what not to do.
The Young Un took his (then) new girl on a road trip in my chariot that I had loaned him while he ignored me.
So Cinderella couldn’t get to the ball.
The Hulk found his way out of the woods of his depression and now lives with his love in the mountains on the other side of the country.
(I like that happy ending)
The Poet debacle reads like the Sleeping Beauty trilogy but when Anne Rice tells it. The one where Sleeping Beauty is raped, kidnapped and gets Stockholm syndrome until she thinks the prince’s fucked up kinks are all fine and good.
And the Giant. I don’t have the time for magic beans, he doesn’t water his plants anyways. I’m seriously exhausted trying to talk him down out of the sky. He is gonna fall and it’s gonna hurt.
Sunshine reminded me of the fake tin soldier. I don’t even know what happened there, I don’t even know his real name. Rumpelstiltskin? That was just some next level psycho shit. Thankfully that was a short story. David Lynch wrote it.
I am sick of all the grand adventure in the middle with trials and ugly plot twists…
And no and then.
I hate having to end recollections by saying “I can’t make this shit up.”
Calm is the new novel romance.
I fucked myself writing this book ‘o’ mine, rookie mistake I put too much of my life in it and my 2 knights have proven themselves idiots dressed in tinfoil. I just want it to end.
I don’t want to write about the person I am with.
Sure I spin straw into gold, but I am tired.
All my girls are single now, let them tell me stories for once while I sit back in a comfy relationship full of actions and less empty words. Something pragmatic and simple.
Once upon a time Red Riding Hood saved herself and then a lumberjack showed up with his calloused fingers that knew how to text her and hold her hand. They went fishing, had lots of amazing sex and snuggles. They both smiled a lot. The end
