change, fairy tales, and dragons! oh yes!!!

today i wanted to talk about change:


i've been scarred by it.


bits and pieces of me have been burned


salt has been placed on open wounds


in dark rooms where no one cares to hear your screaming,
they enjoy it.


those dark places we've all been to for whatever reason:


a broken heart: maybe you were broken, maybe you did the breaking.


a loss: maybe death, maybe someone left you when you were little and the world was very big.


maybe even pain, the physical or the emotionally, it's all the same.


in my instance, it's the physical, 13 years of it.


i joke about it, but even now, it hurts, it's an open wound and i'm scared to death someone will pour salt all over it.


i'm afraid of so many things.


most people are.


spiders, the dark (or more likely, what happens when you're alone and vulnerable), being alone, being stuck with someone, heights, small spaces, the water, fire, whatever your fear or fears may be, the important thing to remember, i think, is that it's important to be open to change.


that's something i'm afraid of. change for the good, not afraid of that. i'm afraid of the pain getting worse, of someone hurting the people i love just by being here. that kind of fear. the fear of existence.


and when it comes right down to it, that's when you need an escape.


i choose stories (books, comics, shows, movies, fairy tales, art, and especially music.)


i think stories are best told orally, i was raised that way.


i was read to, every night, by mom or dad, they switched because they're must have been exhausted, but they always found time to read to me.


my favorites? always the action ones stories, where the hero rides in and saves the damsel, only i pretended to be be the man, the hero...


cinderella needed a fairy godmother, a prince to take her away from it all.
snow white? she needed a prince to wake her up.
little red riding hood? she needed the huntsman to cut open the wolf's belly.
rapunzel needed someone to save her.
they all did.
there were no fairy tales (until now) where women saved the day.
i think i hated sleeping beauty the most: i wanted her to be able to wake herself up.


yes, all of these had morals to them, they are relative to their time and culture,


and yet, i still hate that she couldn't wake herself up.

                                                                                  

it was always those that made me the angriest. because i wanted to say "you! hey you! you're strong! wake up! you don't need him to do it for you! you can do it yourself!!! all you need to do is try, try and be strong for yourself, not for some prince! you have the strength within you!"


and that's, for me, what i've taken away from change and pain:


fight it


wake yourself up


we mostly (not always),
     but quite often: we have the choice of being the damsel, forever waiting....
or
    we can wake ourselves up, be our own heroes, slay our dragons and fight with swords and bows and arrows to get to the evil tower, defeat the dragon, and wake ourselves up!
fight for us!


we,
all of us,
we deserve that choice.




because this, is a fairy tale, in life, you get the choice to be the hero or the damsel.


and now for a silly little thing i like to call reality check on our damsel and hero:
he's coming to rescue her, she'll be saved, they'll live happily ever after... yay!

but in real life, the scenario would play out a little more like this:
her/ hero full of confidence and ... iron: prince's iron sheild and sword, so that's off to a great start, as least it isn't silver... oh wait, parts of the sheild are...


oh yes, and let's not forget sleeping beauty: waiting so long to be rescued by someone from the middle ages where romance was... well, it was not so much. or again, maybe there's just a cultural disconnect. anyway, by now, our damsel as either gone insane by the literal HELL around her, OR killed herself because of aforementioned literal HELL around her. either way... not so good when you break it down...