Charming. Once in a while, I was eating a poisonous red apple, ready to be awakened by my savor with a True Loves Kiss.
Despite my young age, and my absolute joy for each book my mother read me, I knew the stories weren't real. I was aware women could do more than sit back and wait for their one true love. Fairytales were outdated, but I still listened to them every night.
In stories, boys were princes in the bodies of frogs. They were perfect men disguised as beasts. They were knights in shining armor who would travel the world and back to be with the woman they loved. And then everyone lived Happily Ever After. In real life, boys were... well, boys were boys. They would yell and drink and gamble and hurt others. Or at least that was what I saw at home.
When I was sixteen, my opinions on what a boy was changed. My boy seemed different. He didn't yell or drink. He didn't gamble, and he certainly didn't hurt me. Not physically. It was only when he was on my porch, begging for my forgiveness, telling me that the girl I had caught him with was merely a mistake, that I realized feeling physical pain was only a small part of what injury was. That was the night I realized I'd never be the type of girl who could turn beasts into princes.
That year, I packed up all my old fairytales from under my bed, filling up two boxes in the process of ridding them all. I carried them up to the tiny attic above the house that held old baby clothes and my brother's old baseball equipment, hoping the rats he'd once swore he saw up there were long gone. I tossed the boxes onto the ground and flipped off the light switch, closing the door on a decade of memories.
It had been nearly a year since I'd packed them all up. I didn't read fairytales anymore. Because frogs stayed frogs and beasts stayed beasts. Because my father was the first boy to break my heart and a seventeen-year-old cheater was the second. Because stories were stories, and this was real life. I didn't have it in me to fix someone who was broken when I was already far past destroyed. Or so I thought.
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A snippet of my story, Destructvely Oblivious. Let me know what you think! Or if you're interested in giving it a read! Thanks :)
