What Do Fairy Tales Teach Us?

To begin with, what good is Winter Break if you can't stay up way past your bedtime watching movies, eating snacks, drinking a beer, and writing?  No good.  It's no good.

I was getting ready for bed when, as usually happens, my brain started writing.  It's a thing that happens to me often.  I feel as though I am writing a manuscript or some such nonsense in my head.  It's been this way for as long as I can remember.  Maybe I think too much.  Or maybe I am just more fucked up than I thought.  Who knows.  But there seems to be a constant narrative running in my head.  Sometimes, I let it out.  Lucky for you, tonight is such a night.  😂 Get. Excited.

I do not know what it is about breaks.  When I stayed at home, things looked very different.  I would not trade that time, but looking back it probably wasn't the healthiest of situations for me.  I am beyond thankful of the time I was given with my children when they were young, do not misunderstand me,  but I was all off balance.  Now that I work (at a job I truly adore, how lucky am I?), I get breaks just like the kids do.  And after this last semester I was so ready for a break y'all.  So. Ready.

I am such a kid on breaks.  Each day I think I'll be productive and each night I think I'll go to bed at a decent hour.  And before long I am in sweats with a messy bun talking about all I should be doing and then staying up late watching chick flicks and snacking.  I am the worst.

Which brings me to what prompted this all.  As I was getting ready for bed, after just watching yet another dumb ass chick flick, I got to thinking.  Always dangerous, sometimes downright scary when I think.  Why the hell do we subject ourselves to these movies?  I actively sought one out tonight.  What in the actual fuck?

This one, He's Just Not That Into You, I thought might be a better choice.  Not ever having seen it, the title alone lead me to believe that maybe, just maybe, this would not be a happily ever after, they all end up with the right one, nonsense.  Wrong.  So. Wrong.  We learn early on that if a guy is treating you like he doesn't give a shit, he genuinely doesn't give a shit.  No exceptions.  So I am thinking, cool.  This movie isn't going to bull shit me.  I'm down.  Until the fucking end of the movie when we learn that every character is the damn exception.  Every. One. Is. The. Exception.  Wow.  Did not see that coming. 

So after I unstuck my eyes because I has rolled them so far into my head, I figure it is time to brush teeth and go to bed.  Seemed logical.  Until as I am brushing my teeth, I wonder......what is so wrong with believing in the fairy tale?  I know.  I wanted to punch myself too.

Maybe the issue isn't the fairy tale.  Maybe the issue is we have enough heart break that we begin to think the fairy tale isn't real.  Maybe we let the ugly in life set in so much that we become......afraid.  Because if we allow ourselves to believe in the fairy tale, what then when it does not surface when we think it should or look like we how we pictured it?  We become a colder, more realistic person.  Or so we tell ourselves.  Those things only happen in the movies.  Live in reality. 

 As time goes on and I get increasingly older (how did I get so old anyway?), I have actually learned a few things.  One is that you can be smart, level headed, live in reality, and still choose to believe in the fairy tale.  It is all a matter in how you choose to view things.  And as I have gotten older and life has happened, good and bad, I have become more inclined to believe.  Why?  Because having hope is something we should wake up with every day.  Believing in the fairy tale is the utmost in having hope.  Because if you can go through some shit and wake up each day and as your feet hit the floor, have hope that something amazing is about to happen?  That is a beautiful thing.  It is what  makes getting up worth it.  Knowing that despite everything, hope is to be found.  And in the end that is what the fairy tale is.  Never giving up hope.