I'm sure you can remember the bedtime stories your mom or dad or babysitter or nanny told you during your childhood. Cinderella's foot fits in the glass slipper. The frog turns into a prince. Sleeping Beauty is awakened with a gentle kiss. Once upon a time...and then they lived happily ever after. It's nice to think about. Fairytales, the stuff of dreams. The problem is, though, that these peaceful endings, the chance to live happily ever after is all a dream. It's not real. Fairytales don't come true.
It's the other stories, the ones that begin in the dark and end in the dark, the ones that are scary and hard to understand, that come true. It's the nightmares that always seem to become reality--dark, scary, confusing, painful reality.
I was watching the U.S. figure skating championships tonight and remembered being a little girl watching the same thing. I have always been enamored with the sport but it is one that I never really tried. My mom built a ice rink in our yard each winter as I grew up but I never took lessons so I didn't know how to do much more than skate in circles and do close body and sit-spins. Still, I loved, loved. loved watching figure skating on TV. There was something mesmerizing about these women. They seemed so much older than me and so much more beautiful and graceful and talented but they led my heart to dream. I would sit on the couch dreaming of someday being something great. I never thought I would be an olympic figure skater but I had dreams. Honestly, I can't tell you what they were but I know I had them. I know I had dreams, big dreams. These are the kinds of dreams that don't take reality into consideration, the kind that don't care if you don't have the money or the time, or the access, or the talent...that's what makes them dreams. These beautiful young women gracefully glide to and fro across the ice as if they were telling me I could go anywhere I wanted. They stretched their arms wide to show me the world was mine. And they smiled to let me know I, too, was beautiful and could do anything.
Sometime between age 11 and 21, the way I watch figure skating changed. Tonight. though still enamored, I was jealous and felt inferior. These young women were younger than me and people already knew their names, they were already important and on their way to being remembered...and I'm still nobody. Sure, I am important to the people who love me. And there are quite a few people on this planet who know my name, but it's different.
The freedom I associated with figure skating was nothing short of a fairytale. Perhaps it comes true for one girl somewhere, but not every girl like me with their eyes glues to the sequined skaters dancing across the television.
Sometime between 11 and 21, my dreams learned the limits of reality. People don't talk about it, but life is governed by fear...and this now includes dreams. I only dream what I think can actually happen...and I am careful in how far I push that actuality because a dream that doesn't come true at 21 still feels as crushing, if not more, than it did at 11.
We all want happily ever after but for most people, I'm guessing happily ever after means something much different than it does for the princesses in my fairytale stories.
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