I’m going to tell you a story. It’s about a princess who decided one day, not to be. She took a good hard look at herself in her crystal mirror and tilted her head with a frown. The princess ran her hands over her silk dressing gown and squinted at her perfectly symmetrical lips. She twisted around until she couldn’t see herself, but the window. The glass was completely transparent, the curtains around it were blowing slightly in the almost nonexistent wind. The princess leaned on her oak sill and stared straight into the sun. She could hear the town beneath her and she hated them. She hated herself too. She hated her perfect smile, she hated her calculated responses. The princess hated the way she waved with her arm in a one hundred degree angle, hated the way her curls bounced down her back. The only thing she could not bring herself to hate was the person she saw day in, day out, on the other side of the gate. Sometimes he’d be reading in a tree, jumping in the lake, running through a field, soaring like a bird. Other times the princess would look over her shoulder to catch him throwing himself on the ground, punching the air, or just staring at her. She’d furrow her brow trying to understand him, this boy who seemed to always be just out of reach, on the other side of the window pane.
That day, though, the day when she stood at the mirror and hated the perfection she saw, she looked past the glass and into the dying daylight. He was standing at the gate, hands stretched out toward her. The princess couldn’t stand to be the person her kingdom wanted her to be. She tore her dress on her way out the window.
The thing that you have to understand about this princess, is that she was too smart for her own good. But in that moment, all reasoning flew right out of the tower with her. The poor girl lived by the philosophy of saying what you need to, doing what you must before the moment is gone forever. The mantra isn’t what hurt her though; he did. She didn’t think that nothing would be there to catch her. She assumed she’d grow wings and glide over to him. She was wrong. She had always been wrong, which is why they all tried to tell her to stay put, keep quiet, don’t forget to be beautiful. She tried her very best to remember, but when it came to him, she didn’t care about anything other than making his eyes smile. The princess gracefully fell from her perch to the tangle of the garden below. She never held the hand of the boy that she saw daily, picking flowers, screaming to the night, scratching at his flaws. She never got to ask him why he chose to love her from afar, because she was sure it was love, even though it wasn’t. The princess got swallowed by roses and lilacs and peonies. She landed with a smile on her face and hope in her fingertips.
You see, that boy, that wonderful, complicated, sublime boy, never existed, because they don’t. The princess wasn’t a princess, the castle wasn’t as tall, the mirror wasn’t crystal but plastic with a bronzer compact. Her gown was a polyester uniform and her perfect lips were stained. She was a girl who thought she found her prince. She ran to him and she stumbled. She’s the girl in every girl. Don’t cry for her though. She’s been in enough pain for the whole world a thousand times over. But it’ll lessen, and some day, she’ll only remember the scars not the one who caused them. Soon, someone’s bound to come around that makes her feel like royalty again. And this time, hopefully, he won't make her come to him. Hopefully, this time, he'll jump the gate to her heart without a second thought.