Fairytales and Growing Up On False Narratives
Virginia Reebs
Once upon a time
In a land far, far away.
Isn’t how real life actually begins.
The eternal quest for Happily ever after,
Til death do us part
Setting the stage for disappointment.
Because life doesn’t end on horseback with
My knight in shining armour,
riding off into the sunset.
Reducing human nature into archetypes.
Clear-cut morality
making it easier to
know right from wrong.
Naively expecting good to always triumph over evil.
Believing I was a damsel in distress,
waiting for my Prince Charming.
That true love’s kiss would rouse me from dreamless slumber.
Star-crossed lovers seeking an
Antidote for the spell;
The key to unlock the curse.
My whole life waiting for that moment to begin.
Searching the world for that magic kingdom where enchanted forests hide fantasy castles with turrets and staircases to nowhere.
Giant beanstalks reaching into the clouds.
Evil step mothers and wicked witches,
genies to grant me three wishes.
Brave knights on noble quests
Heroes slaying dragons in my honour.
Sword fights and other tests.
With talking creature companions and
Fairy godmothers as my guides.
A rags to riches tale of love and adventure.
Where everyday is a romance and youth is eternal.
But the land of make believe
was never meant to be;
The disenchantment of reality.
Expecting life to imitate perfection.
Comparing against an impossible ideal.
And growing up means learning that narrative was a fiction.
The psychology of linguistics:
My reality at the mercy of language.
Alienated without words to express alternative lifestyles.
Archetypes and fairytales reducing the complexity of life into cookie cutter outcomes of how a life should be lived.
As an adult, I’m learning new vocabulary.
I learned the terms “mimetic desire” and “hemeisis”.
That these stories serve as roadmaps to living a culturally acceptable pre-scripted life.
That I’ve come to internalize traditional societal values that I don’t even believe in,
yet still feel the need to justify my life choices against.
It dawns on me that I’ve been performing my whole life—Auditioning for a role in this play that I want no part of.
My actions dictated by the belief that this was the only script available.
Now I’m half way through the second Act and trying to figure out who I really am, what I really like and what I want out of this life.
I’m picking up the pen to write my own narrative.
The empowering rebellion of agency and laying claim to my life.
There is a terrifying freedom in the awareness that no one is coming to save me.
It’s too bad that the Disney princesses always got more airtime than She-Ra.
