Disney movies were always my favorite thing, especially the ones where princes would save princesses and they would live happily ever after. In fact, my favorite fairytale was Rapunzel. It was about a beautiful girl trapped in a tower and one day a prince walks by her tower and hears her signing. Desperate to find out where the lovely voice in coming from, the prince awaits hiding near the tower when he sees a witch calling up to the tower "Rapunzel! Rapunzel! let down your hair!" He watches a long lock of hair come down for the witch to climb the tower with, he went home that night and the next day he went back to the tower got close enough and called up "Rapunzel! Rapunzel! let down your hair!" and she did, he climbed the tower to find a beautiful woman he heard singing the day before; he asked her to marry him and she agreed.
He left the tower and when the witch came to visit that night, Rapunzel gave away her prince by asking the witch why it was easier to help her up the tower than it was to help the prince, the witch became angry and cut Rapunzel's hair and sent her to live off on her own. The prince came back that night to visit, but instead of finding Rapunzel, he found the witch who told him that he would never see Rapunzel again! She then proceed to push him off, and he fell into thorns that blinded him. The prince then wandered the wastelands for months until he reached the wilderness where Rapunzel was. There, he hears her singing once again and they find each other. Rapunzel sees that the prince has been blinded and begins to cry. Luckily though, her tears return his sight and they return to his kingdom where they live happily ever after. Or at least that is the way my mother told me that story went.
There was nothing I enjoyed more than hearing my mother tell me bedtime stories about princesses being saved and living happily ever after. That was the way I always imagined my life—someday I would meet my prince and live forever and be happy with him. The idea that someday a prince would come save me was one that I liked. What I loved even more was seeing princess like Aurora, Belle, Cinderella, and so on being saved, then getting married and living happily ever after. I mean there was always a sad part in the movies, something bad happened and then prince charming swept in and saved the day nothing fascinated me more than the idea that happily ever existed.
These stories appealed to me even more because my parents married each other at a very young ages. I had never seen a couple more happy in my life than my parents, and I imagined that someday my life would be like that of my parents and that I would be happily married, with children, a big house, and a loving family what more could I want right? Or at least this is what I was told I was supposed to want. My mother always told me, "You have to find a hard working guy or who is going to make sure you have the luxurious life you deserve, make sure he is rich, better yet if he is a professional, that's even better." She gave me this idea that I was supposed to be searching for a source of income and a stable way of living instead of my soul mate, my companion, a person that I saw myself spending the rest of my life with. I had this idea that I was supposed to follow my mother’s wishes I mean she was right, I mean after all she was the one telling me the fairy tales what else could I believe.
As I grew older I found it a little harder to believe. You see, in these stories and movies, the princes fell in love with the princesses at first sight but that never happened to me. At first I believed I was not good enough to be love. Of course how anyone could love me? I wasn't as pretty as these princesses and i wasn't as smart or talented as these princesses. Mostly I began to look at it differently I wondered why I had to wait around for someone to come save me but that didn't stop me I still continued to have hope that someday I would find my prince.
But after my first year at college things got complicated, you see my parents were not on the best terms, they communicated and were civil to each other but after my first year in college, I came home to setting a quiet dinner table and when I tried to start conversations they were awkward ones, the image I had of happiness soon disappeared, no longer was there a happy family that had dinner together every night. I began having meals by myself, my brother and sister were always off hanging out with friends attempting to avoid all the problems going on at home, and my parents were always finding ways to avoid each other. I kept waiting for the day things would go back to normal, but they didn't. Instead I saw my father and mother fall more apart, then one day my mother told me "Me and your dad are getting divorced" I looked at her with so much hate in my eyes, how could she do this to me? I hated them, soon all those fairy tales my mother told me were a lie, like how she told me "someday your prince will come and you will live happily ever after."
The one thing Disney movies taught me was that happily ever after was real, that someday my prince would save me, but it never thought me that it would take work, time and patience, but mostly trust. My mother was betrayed and could no longer love the way in which she loved my father, but he failed to love her back. Disney thought me that prince charming was real but divorce has showed me that prince charming exists but that sometimes you can't sit around and wait for prince charming to save you. Sometimes you have to learn to save yourself, learn to love yourself and care about you before you can care about someone else, and that it might seem like forever to wait for the right guy (sometimes not prince charming) to come along but in the end it will all be worth it.
