My Walking Daydream

Prologue: My Happily Ever After

When I was four, my parents would tuck me into bed to read me a fairytale. The typical handsome prince meets a beautiful princess, the typical drama happens, the typical falling in love with each other-- even though every force of nature is trying to separate them-- and the typical riding off in the sunset, living happily ever after--everything typical, typical, typical. I loved every second of these unrealistic cliches; I used to think these stories were not just stories passed around through the mouths of loveless people. I thought they were real life and what makes the world go round. I dreamed up fantasies of people loving someone forever and always and getting the love you gave in return. I had the notion that when 'forever' was said, it was spoken from the very bottom of your soul, to your heart, and through your mouth. When you said you loved someone, you meant it 'till your dying breath.

Love was achievable. It was eternal, everlasting, and true. I perceived it as a beautiful thing that wasn't just some simple, flimsy emotion that you merely felt; it was a promise. A commitment. It was a treasure that every pirate who dared to look at the map and spend their lives going out to explore and hunt for it would find the X they've scowered the world to find. Love, even from the tender age of four, was the end game for me. It was my happily ever after.

When I was five, the dream started to slip through my chubby fingers like melted butter. No worries, all I'd have to do was ask my mommy to clean it off the floor. I've always been perceptive of the world and noticed things a normal child shouldn't of noticed; changes started to take place in my santuary, my home. No longer was there a bright twinkle in my parent's eyes, or the light of love so daring, so ethernal that you had to glance away everytime you took a peek. Dullness snuck it's way in, like a thief in the night. It overthrew the love, and took it's place on the throne. The marriage that was bound together by a simple piece of paper was ripped into pieces and burning in the fire, to be left to turn blackened ash.

Looking into the past, I realize that when my parents lost love for each other, they lost love for every other human being that dared to care for them. That includes my thirteen year old brother, Rory, my twelve year old sister, Venus, and then me. I didn't know how to deal with the emotions that came with what I was seeing and feeling; I was only five for God's sake! All I should have been worrying about is if all those boogers I had consumed out of habit was bad for my body. My brother was consumed with being an angsty teen, and my sister was too obsessed with being popular in her new middle school and making more friends; they had little to no time to care about their five year old sister. I was left on my own with a mother and a father who were too consumed in their own self-pity and hatred to notice the young child they had created.

When I was six, I witnessed anger I had not thought existed. I didn't understand why daddy was screaming and hitting mommy or why she wasn't fighting back at all. I wanted to protect mommy, but I was a princess, and when there is a princess, there is a knight in shining armor to come to the rescue. So, I hid, which will later become a habit that will cause me a lot of pain and struggle.

"My prince is going to come" I thought.

Never will I forget the memories that followed. I remember the AC had been broken on that humid summer day. The closet was a stuffed full of clothes, making the small closet seem even smaller and hotter. My bright pink Barbie shirt stuck to my chest and back and clung to the sweat that rolled down my hunched over back. The closet had been pitch black, but I still closed my eyes, praying when I opened them, my prince would be there. But, it continued, as the sound of fist and bone met in a rough embrace, penetrating the air. Daddy had said words that deserved a mouth full of soap. I remember thinking that when that was all over, I would make sure to wash his mouth out myself.

My perfect fairy tale idea exploded in my face the night I saw him go too far. My mind woke up from it's daydream, letting me realize that life was not a silly story out of a book. What prince beats his princess to the point she almost dies? What princess walks out of her children's lives, leaving them with a grandmother who resembles more of the witch in Hansel and Gretel than a warm, welcoming presence? What prince laughs in his children's faces with no remorse as they visit him in his highly secured 'castle' and tells them to go to hell? You want to know why? It's because there is no princes or princesses; they don't exist. The prince who was supposed to be a knight in shining armor turned out to be the villain, a beast. The princess who was supposed to be caring and kind, was a coward and selfish.

I believed everyone deserved and got a good ending; they don't. That's why there is villains in fairy tales. They showcase and represent the worst of humanity. Villains don't get happy endings in stories, so why would they in real life?

At sixteen, I know life isn't a fairy tale and there's no such thing as happily ever after. And my prince is never going to come.