I suppose that if I were to write about someone I hadn't before, I'd have to choose Cinderella. I can't be certain when I began to call her that, (obviously Cinderella was not her real name) but at some point, for some reason, I decided it fit. It's funny, because she was such a little girl when I knew her. Then again, we both were. Children, I mean. But she was dainty, and I often feared I was putting on a little too much weight. In some ways she was what you'd expect a princess to be. Physically, definitely, and she even came complete with a Disney-style tortured past.
For a while, she was a good friend in her way. We had a matched type of ridiculousness, I guess, but we weren't really a matched set. Where she was a princess, I think I was aware that I was only a maid. Even walking around town people seemed surprised at our friendship. The contrast was evident, I suppose.
But it here's the thing about Cinderella: she was the type of girl desperate to grow up too fast. You probably know the type. I tend to think that even at my most difficult ages I had some sense of maturity. My parents raised me right. Cinderella, on the other hand, liked to act older than her years, while she never had the maturity to back it up. I quickly lost pace with her after that.
However, I still scrambled to pick up her all her messes. What a good little maid I was. Even now, given the chance, I probably would.
Then came the days she disappeared. Days of gathering my courage for ultimately useless phone calls, and imagining the soundtrack these days would feature if they were a movie. It was horrifying to think I had lost her. But then she came back. No, she didn't really come back, but she resurfaced and made contact and I was overjoyed. Still, we fell out of touch after that.
Cinderella told an awful lot of lies, and insisted on going missing regularly. Looking back, I think she was abusive. She could emotionally manipulate me as easy as snap her fingers, and I fell for it every single time.
It was stupid, really. Maybe I was stupid.
Cinderella says she's cleaning up her act now. She's apologized a lot.
Would it it still be stupid to believe her?
