Ruined Fairy Tales

There are many stories we're told as kids. Some stay with us, always.

One such tale for me is Peter Pan. The tale of a trickster, adventurer, eternal kid who will take you away to a place where you're safe from mean grown ups & responsibility & worries about things like what you'll be when you grow up...because you'll never grow up. He's a little bit of a sad sort, stuck in his world, lonely really... so as the girl (Wendy!) I always longed to find a way to bring Peter Pan home.

This has led to me falling for another fairy tale: That one day you will meet someone who will see in you their grand adventure, the biggest and best adventure they have ever experienced. That they'll want you with them so much they'll break their own rules (NO GIRLS IN NEVERLAND), take you away from everything you've ever known (false promises, broken hearts, loneliness...) to a new place, no one has ever been before.

Right.

That's maybe the worst fairy tale of all. Because, as we all know, that just doesn't actually exist. We find something close, something almost there...but nothing is ever quite right, is it? And even though we know that it takes work, its never as easy as it is in the movies...still we hope it'll maybe be that way for us. That we're the exception, not the rule.

I would kill to be someone's exception.

But instead? I sit here after work each day, alone. Nobody to talk to about how the day has gone, or to just...sit next to while we don't do anything at all. No one to go for a hike with on a lovely spring day, or to cuddle next to when the cold winds blow. Nothing.

Each time I hope I get close, it's taken away from me. I've been told it's cuz I wanted it too much. But, didn't Wendy long for an escape from the nursery? Dream of not having to become a lady? And, she got it. Granted, it didn't end up quite how she'd imagined...but... still. She got what she wanted. I don't get what I want. I've been single for 4 years. I've had short flings that served to do nothing but reinforce the fact that no one wants me. For a myriad of reasons, really, but the end result is always the same.

Me. Alone.