Giving up on Fairytales...

For approximately twenty-four years I had managed to hold on to my faith in love. And by love, I don’t mean the “ we’re family so I love you” kind, or the “of course I love you, we’ve been friends forever” kind. I mean the kind of love that takes long and heartwarming novels to portray, the kind that makes your muscles all tingly and weak, the kind that makes you forget to breathe while thinking, because you’re so mesmerized by just the thought of the other person… The kind of love, people often call “true love”. Then one day, my twenty-four-year-old body woke up to an entirely different person in charge.
The change although gradual, happened sort of surprisingly for it wasn’t a conscious decision on my part. But this new person claiming my body was as different from my old self, as day is from night. For starters, this person was awfully sarcastic as well as pessimistic. She didn’t believe true love even existed and she often managed to find the cracks in everything upon closer examination. In other words, she was the kind of person that refused to believe in fairy-tales unlike her former self. She refused to wait around for charming princes or try the frogs just to see if they would change with her kiss. In short, she did not believe she ever would or could find “true love”. And finally, she had made peace with that.

Her friends, who were once my friends often told her she was being crazy or that she shouldn’t give up just yet. If only they knew it was too late. The other girl (in this case the old me), giddy with emotions, always excited, always ready to jump in with all her heart was long dead. She had no more unconditional love left to give… she had been spent and that was that. The only love left in her heart was the love she could give her warm and fuzzy friends, her welcoming, trustworthy and dependable friends, her pets. That love she could still spare for those friends, because unlike the people before them, they could not and would not hurt her with harsh words or neglect. They wouldn’t avoid her for months without any good reason or forget to call her on her birthday. They also wouldn’t talk to other people about her, calling her a slut or a whore. Their love was simple. When she gave them love, she would feed and pet them and they would respond with pure, unadulterated love. She could depend on their smiles whenever life got her down. Life with her pets was actually bearable compared to the alternative: life without. So when people tried to convince her to give up her pets and look for some human contact instead, she tried to keep reminding herself that they simply didn’t understand her and that that was why they were trying to push their idea of a better and healthier life down her throat without even realizing that what she needed was very different from their needs were. After all, how could they know how badly she’d been hurt before? She never let anyone see how deep her wounds ran, she never let anyone see her cry, at least not for long. She never let anyone see her face mirroring her insides. It wasn’t like she was intentionally trying to fool people, she wasn’t. It was just that, she was often too proud to let them see how deep her sorrow was. She refused to burden the people she loved with her lack of strength, so she let them believe she was Ok, or that she soon would be. She was a scared little girl at a masquerade, way past her curfew, trying on mask after mask just to avoid getting caught. So inside, she was broken, but to the world, at least that of people, she was strong, carefree and probably a little bit too opinionated and slutty.

Now the story of how she became that person was a more interesting one…full of ups and downs but still a bit too difficult to share... So I will skip ahead to the parts that are easier to divulge...

A little more than a year ago, I was picking out red lace lingerie at Agent Provocateur, with him in mind, hoping that he’d be back in time to celebrate the new year with me. A year later so much has changed that we’ve been living in the same city for months, but somehow consciously or unconsciously avoiding seeing each other. What’s so different one might ask. For one thing, my protection is back on with regards to him for the first time in years. It seems the last time I was hurt so bad that I no longer trust him not to hurt me, even only as a friend. Whether I’m willing to admit it or not, the last time may have been the final straw, the nail on the coffin so to speak, that would end “us” once and for all. Last year I looked at my new red lace thong and garter belt with anticipation and hope, this year I look at them and see yet another unfulfilled wish and another broken heart. At the end of each year, people often say things like: “Out with the old, in with the new.” In the case of my lingerie, that theory is difficult to apply since although it should have been old by now, it’s barely been worn at all, making it difficult to classify as old or new. So why is it that all I want to do when I look at the damn thing is burn it? Who knows… Maybe it’s because it reminds me of all the fun I could have had instead of pinning away for yet another guy that didn’t deserve me. Or maybe it’s because it reminds me of all those fantasies I had concocted in my head, only to have them taken away, leaving me vulnerable and exposed. Either way, the inclination to burn it is probably more symbolic than anything else. The burning symbolized complete destruction, as in burning bridges, so that I won’t be able to even attempt to go back in a lonely or weak moment. It’s a way of guaranteeing my struggle to move on does not fail.




What should a girl do when she realizes that the love affair of her life has passed her by already? What can she do when she realizes that she has become a woman without ever experiencing the innocent and passionate first love that everyone deserves to have? What can be said to ever make up for that kind of loss? It’s hard to say. The realization is often a very harsh one. It often hits you the hardest when you see other couples experiencing this kind of love, and sometimes it hits you when you watch movies of coming of age stories such as “Dirty Dancing”. You realize that instead of waiting for that one guy that made your heartbeat drown any and all other sounds, the one that made you feel that way, and cared about you enough to want you as more than a trophy; you lost your innocence to some jerk who was cheating on his girlfriend with you and taking advantage of your feelings for him. It’s a cold hard realization when you look back and see this. And once you do, you’re changed forever… You can’t go back and change the past. You can’t become pure and innocent again, no matter how hard you try to convince yourself and those around you, the invisible scar somehow always shows. Innocence lost, it seems, can never be restored and your own reflection in the mirror is a constant living and breathing reminder of that fact. What should you do when you realize you’re never going to get a “Johnny” of your own? What do you do when you realize your Johnny was actually an F.... who chased after you for months only so he could sleep with yet another virgin. What should you do when you realize you’ve been duped and there’s nothing you can do to fix it?




The only smart thing to do is to learn from your mistake and move on so that you can impart your newly gained wisdom to the girls and women of future generations, and maybe some of them can avoid making the same mistakes you made. Maybe they can listen to your stories and finally believe that a 20 year-old guy will do or say pretty much anything when trying to get laid. Granted, you didn’t believe it when some people tried to warn you back then, but then again if you had believed that those people actually had enough experience to be doling out that advice, maybe you would have listened to them more and taken them seriously. Then maybe you could have made some really different choices. Choices, that could have led to, a happier and more complete life.




One thing is for certain. And that is that there’s no point in wallowing in regret. Regret doesn’t change the past or fix old mistakes. In fact, it only makes them bigger and messier. So instead of looking at what you could have done back then, it’s best to try figuring out your next step towards your future. Looking forward is the key in overcoming the tendency to lose oneself in self-reflection. It’s the key to accepting and embracing who you are, as well as who you never will be, in one fell swoop. It’s what life is, once all the pretenses and ugliness have been removed, leaving behind the naked and honest truth which is that the ship carrying your Romeo or your Johnny has sailed away long ago, leaving your tiny heart too broken to fix herself, and now it is up to you to find the common sense and strength to pick up the pieces and put her back together. And believe it or not, your only enemy in this process is TIME. I know people say that time heals wounds and that you’ll get better in time… But the truth about time is that the more it passes, the more it numbs you and one day you wake up to realize that you’ve wasted YEARS waiting for TIME to do its trick when you should have been actively trying to move on with life and find new dreams to chase after. You might ask me where I get the nerve to make such bold judgments and statements and dismiss my views because lets face it, who am I to be giving anyone advice? Well, I’m someone who has more or less wasted a decade mostly waiting around for TIME… so I’m someone who’s been there, I’m the 27-year-old failure well on her way to becoming a cautionary tale… In short, I’m just someone who KNOWS…