what a smile can hide

fairytales

as a child, i used to read for the happy endings. the princess meeting the prince.
 
but now i read for the sad endings. i’d rather focus on someone else’s pain. 

i don’t understand mine. but their’s i do. and i don’t know if that’s what truly hurts me. because i was once a child with light in my eyes and hope in my heart, and now i am a teenager who cries myself to sleep and tries to hide my own pain with that of the fictional kind. 

when we were little, life was as it was in fairytales. we were the princess, the handsome prince, the dragon that needed slaying. we were never the villain. never the ones that we needed protecting from. even that was too much of a stretch for our imagination. 

i'm starting to think that the moral of the story is not the ones that we were told about when we all tuned out in english classes. it was never to not go out late, or to not wander off the path, or not to trust strangers. 

no. 

it was to not trust yourself, because in the end your distorted views become your downfall. 

the villains in the story are simply people trying to survive with what society gave them, the princes and princesses and mermaids and little girls who weren't shown love and in return couldn't love themselves. the heroes in the stories were so caught up in saving them from the perceived threat that they forgot the real ones. 

snow white ate an apple. that much is true. it was poisoned by her stepmother. but did anyone ever think about the fact that for most of her life she was told that she was never going to be as good as Snow White's original mother? 

maybe, in her own way, she was trying to protect herself by becoming the monster that they believed her to be. 

maybe, just maybe, she was trying to protect her daughter by showing her just how harsh the world is, and with naivety comes danger.  

maybe the story was truly teaching us the terrors that a lifetime of self doubt and forced views has on people. 

maybe it was trying to teach us that the monsters are the ones closest to us, often our very own selves. 

belle fell in love with the beast. 

the moral was supposed to be about finding love in the strangest places, and that appearances can be deceiving. i suppose, in a way that's true. the saddest people smile the brightest. the happiest people are the loneliest. 

perhaps it was more about self love. the beast was so caught up in how he was supposed to act as a prince that he forgot how to be human, and began to act like the very beast that society forced him to become. he began seeing himself as he thought everyone else saw him, so with a few sad thoughts and a single mistake that he couldn't take back, the prince became the beast and the villain was the very thing that the prince didn't want to become. 

cinderella supposedly shows that dreaming leads to big things, and no matter what, true love prevails and even the filthiest slaves can become the next princess. 

the stepmother was evil. there's no denying that. but what if she was just a small girl trying to feel big, trying to make up for the lack of self that she couldn't help but do anything to be in control of just a tiny piece of her life. i know that i would do anything for that. 

so maybe, in the end the evil stepmother wasn't so evil. maybe she was wishing to be shown that she too was pretty and kind and worth it, like everyone did to ella. 

and maybe ella was so stuck inside her self doubt that she was afraid of what she saw inside herself that she rather believed others opinions above her own. ella might also have been searching for some sort of comfort in the scary place that was her mind that she became stuck in her own world, terrified to stay but even more terrified to leave. 

the little mermaid was all about finding unity through difference. the sea witch was painted as the villain. 

but she was just a little girl, told that she was evil for doing what she loved best, making potions and practising spells, wanting to impart her wisdom on the next little girl that came along wishing to stand out. 

deluded in her ways as she was, maybe she just wanted to save another girl from her fate, not quite a mermaid and not quite a witch, just a girl stuck in a life that she had long ago stopped wanting. 

maybe she was trying to teach that just wanting is not enough. you have to put effort into your life. 

maybe it was teaching that the way we think isn't enough, and we should appreciate what we have. 

and perhaps the little mermaid wasn't so innocent after all. maybe she was another girl stuck in her mind, wanting out of a life she no longer wanted, wishing for someone to come and save her. maybe her innocent wish wasn't so innocent after all and was borne of something more profound: to just finally feel something. 

and i guess, in the end, she got what she wanted. she was free of a life that she never fully loved. death is like that sometimes.

people get trapped in their own lives, wanting more but never being able to attain it. the world is proof enough of this. 

aladdin was a boy who dared to seize more, unintentionally or not, or so the stories say. 

he was defined by the restrictions imposed on him by society, and eventually he became them. a street rat hoping for nothing more than survival. 

he was a hollowed out shell of humanity, just wanting to survive the next day. we are all like that sometimes. 

but then he decided to go for more, allowed himself to foolishly believe in the first person that told him he could be more. 

he leapt ahead, not caring about the past. the past defines a person, though. it was still with him. there's no outrunning the wind. 

and then the big believer turned out to be the villain. it's a plot twist that everyone saw coming. it's the way our lives go. 

and jafar, the famous villain, simply wanted more power. but you can see it in his actions. he just wanted someone to notice him. someone to care. to see the screams inside that begged to break free and be noticed.

he got his wish, in the end. it was just that he was too far gone to be saved. 

and yet in every fairytale, true love always occurred. they fell deeply, irrevocably in love. and i can't help but become jealous about that. because deep down, that's all we want. to love and to be loved. to love ourselves and have someone love you back for every part of you. 

so go ahead. do it. call me greedy. desperate. deluded. it’s nothing that i haven’t called myself before. 

but I just want the love that you find in fairytales. 

the love that starts with teenagers and ends with only death.

the type that is so soul shattering that we don’t have to break each other in order to feel it because we repair each other every time. 

i’m well aware the men in this world don’t show up with flowers in hand, or take you stargazing just so they can gaze at you. they won’t take a bullet for you. they can’t love me like that. not if they don’t break down their world. not if I can’t even love myself.

it makes me sound sad. but I’m not. i’m just so damn tired of this situation. of my life. 

our lives are more like fairytales than we expect.