Once upon a time… I believed in fairytales. They lit a raging, dangerous fire inside of me; words were kindle and storybooks gasoline. I’d press my eyelids together so hard that it’d hurt and imagine some far away, bubble-gum pink-stoned, castle with a handsome prince defeating a dangerous, dragon with knife-like teeth just for me.

I used to think that I would always be happy.

But what am I supposed to do? Believe in all of that, forever? Hold on to the dreams that lacked both a grain of truth and foothold in reality? I had to grow up and move on. I went to school, passed my tests, got a job; I’m trying to live the American dream, and isn’t that grand? Isn’t as pleasure-prompting and great as society whispered and shouted and cried and said it would be? You tell me.

But it isn’t, in my opinion. It really, really isn’t. It’s wrong and horrible and ugly and I could claw at my vulnerable throat with razor-sharp nails, just thinking about it. When I was young, short as ever, addicted only to something as amazingly innocent as chocolate-chip cookies, and thought I was a fairy, my parents were ninjas, I thought one day I would meet my Prince Charming who would fight my stress- and-anxiety-inducing every-day battles, love pink as much as me, but love me more, not-so amazingly enough.

Those stories and the people who told them, they lied to me. Not every girl is a princess; not every boy is a prince. You fend for yourself and many won’t think you’re as gorgeous as a gem. They promised me a perfect world where I’ll always be happy, never wanting for more.

(And if sometimes, when I’m lying, stomach up, on my small, thin-sheet bed staring at the plaster-white ceiling above and crossing my fingers — and legs, just to be sure — wishing and hoping and praying and wanting so, so bad, that everything will be okay; wishing on a star I can’t see through the hazy smog of hopelessness and desperation, that one distant day, I’ll smile and it would actually mean something, something real: then that’s no one’s business but mine.)