DIARIES FROM DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

“Fall in love with someone who sees the wars within you and not only chooses to stay, but chooses to stand by your side and help you fight them!” 

Play While Reading:

“Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.”  I figure in this life I am not who I once was and not yet who I will become.  Right now I guess is the ‘in between’.  At the end of the day it’s not the arrival that matters, it’s the journey.  So why does this journey not come with a roadmap or something to give us some direction?

Most of the time I feel really pretty good within myself.  I know who I am.  I know I have worth and I know i’m alright on my own.  I suspect this is why I run into a lot of trouble with ‘clingy’ men.  If I had to be completely honest with you, every so often I feel incredibly scared.  Anxiety through the roof and a state of panic becomes my resting heart rate which is soul destroying at the best of times.  

As part of my ‘evolution’ over the past 34 years I have noticed the dramatic change from the blissfully ignorant little girl with the ‘Disney Princess’ ideals to who I am today.  I guess I always figured that my Prince Charming or at least a guy who got my weirdness and I could stand to be in a room with for longer than 5 minutes was just around the corner waiting for me.  Although I suspect I knew this idea was outragiously obserd the entire time? As part of my dissociative process to deal with a not so pleasent at times childhood, the ‘fairytale’ was my coping mechanism.  I remember laying awake thinking to myself “one day someone will love me and get me out of this pleace” and the idea of a Prince Charming saving me seemed to fit that idea for me at the time.  The realisation that I no longer needed my ‘security blanket’ in life is an interesting perspective to suddenly be attuned to.  It feels almost like i’m looking in on my life as an observer and I can see through these blog posts alone my own ‘evolution’ as it happens.

In the recent past I blammed Disney for what I saw as an unrealistic expectation of what love was but now I am not so sure I see it in such a negative light.  I began to wonder whether the idea really existed in the first place but now I see that maybe it’s more of a case that possibily it’s just not for me instead.  I mean I am independent, I am strong willed, I can look after myself and let’s face it no man has ever ‘completed me’ or really done me too many favours that I didn’t end up doing for myself in the end anyway.  Let’s face the facts on Disney Princesses, Snow White was only 14, Sleeping Beauty only had 18 lines of dialog in the entire movie, Cinderella and Belle were not even of royal descent and to date only one Disney Princess, Tiana was gainfully employed anyway.  So maybe I just don’t fit the profile and this is why I haven’t found it?

Silverlining to this whole thing?  A study showed that Disney had a consistant message within their storylines which was encouraging a ‘prosocial’ outlook to life and the importance of helping friends along the way.  So I guess I can thank Disney for that what I consider to be an important quality I possess at the end of the day.

So where to now?  Good question!

What do I tell the future ‘Disney Princesses’?  Do I give them a brutal reality check or let them have the dream for a little bit while they still can?  What do I tell my son?  Possibly that women are not objects of affection and it takes more than a fancy white horse to make the ones worth falling in love with fall in love with you?

So as the ‘black and white’ battle between good and evil at the end of the day is nothing more than fairytale, I say good bye to the previous version of myself.  In life people are complex and as long as the up is worth the down then you keep going I guess.

To be continued…….