I am in grief. We all are. There are stages to it and I’ve watched daily as my Twitter TL spins with different people paddling through different phases of it. Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance.
What are we grieving? The fairytale. The simple idea of it.
We were all brought up as little girls on Cinderella stories. White knight comes in, falls in love with the princess, they get on a white horse and ride off.
Happily. Ever. After.
At heart we are all still those little girls. We love a good love story. Isn’t that why we love Twilight? Why we all read fanfic that nearly always guarantees us an ending with a ‘HEA’.
We want the white horse and the pretty sunset.
This. We want this. Complete with the fucking cheesy heart hands. |
The problem is we applied the fairytale to a real life prince and princess.
It was so easy to do. Watching them watch each other had an addictive quality to anyone with a romantic heart. They wore it on their sleeves. It was mesmerizing. Their 'love at first sight' story became sweeter than Edward and Bella’s. From the outside looking in, they seemed to travel through life in a perfect glass bubble only Walt Disney himself could have crafted.
But perfect bubbles don’t really exist and
Disney just rolled credits after they panned across the sunset. We never
got to see life in the castle. Real life. The hard stuff after the wicked queen
was dead and it was time to get down to the day to day.
Day to day is hard. We all know that. THAT is why we are here. Following their fairytale was our escape from our own day to day.
Life is difficult right now for a lot of
people. We’re living in a world with a lot of real problems. It’s so much
easier to focus on someone else’s happy than to focus on our own sad. And it’s fun to be joyful about something with
other people. Their happy drew us together… happily.
| That's right. I'm totally blaming this shit on you Walt. |
Is their real life really a fairytale? Is anyone’s? Of course not. We all know that. But in our hearts we want to believe in it.
Is it wrong for us to be sad and upset now that the fairytale seems to have morphed into some sort of real life tragedy? No. Of course not. We are grieving the loss of that shiny dream. We are grieving that our happy escape has suddenly turned into a real world, messy place to be.
And that is ok. There are stages. You have to go through them. You have to feel this shit. You have to talk about it (my husband says ‘endlessly’) so you can identify where you are at and wade through it.
And, I think at the same time you still have to hope. Hope
that somewhere there is a fairytale that’s real. Find the small fairytales in
your own life. Hope that they find some in theirs again someday. With each
other or with someone else.
I don’t know how this will all play out. Disney never taught us this part of the play. It’s like we’ve gone to Act 4. No one has written this epilogue.
I always worried that the weight of our staring could
eventually crush them. I hope now the weight of our sorrow does not. They have
enough of their own without carrying ours on their backs. We need to let our own dust settle, so they
have enough peace and quiet to find their way through this shit storm. There is no white horse coming to save them
this time. It’s a long road they’re gonna have to walk down. Together or alone.
I hope they eventually find their own sunsets.
And I hope we are able to keep believing fairytales do exist.
Until then, google up the stages of grief. A very smart, dear friend of mine would also tell you to google up ‘parasocial relationship’. Do it. You'll be enlightened. We are all grappling with trying to understand the ‘why’ and the ‘how’. I don’t know that those questions are truly ours to ask. We need to respect that we don’t deserve the answers.
And I’m not sure the answers even matter, because no matter how Act 4 ends, the spell has already been broken. We know they aren’t the prince and princess we projected them to be.
They have a real life. With real problems. They make
mistakes and have to live with them. They hurt. Just like the rest of us.
Instead, ask why this is important to you. Reflect on what
it’s brought to your life. And then paddle through… I’ll be right alongside you
rowing along with some tears of my own.
God speed to us all.
<3 twopeas1pod
This post has been the result of 20+ years of reading romance novels, way too much time on twitter, 2 years of watching cheesy Robsten videos on YouTube, a few traumatic days of listening to Taylor Swift's Breathe (google that shit, it's a gut punch), and the facebook posting of a wise wise communication professor who shall remain nameless but is appreciated nonetheless. Whatever emotion you are feeling right now. It's. Ok. Paddle on through... there has to be a sunset somewhere out there... (2Ps |
| Are you shitting me that this is the best boat we can find? |
 |
| Who the fuck decided we'd paddle anyway? Fuck the boat. Let's ride off into the sunset with these guys... |
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