a cinder(fuckin')rella story

"Who does it really work out for, Kit? Did it work out for Skinny Marie or Rachel?"

"Those were very specific cases of crackheads."

"I just wanna know who it works out for. You give me one example of somebody that we know that it happened for."

"Name someone?"

"Yeah, one person that it worked out for."

"You want me to give you a name or something."

"Yeah."

"What, you want me to name someone? You want like a name? Oh, God, the pressure ... of a name..."
"Cinder-fuckin'-rella!"

*laughter ensues*



So now you know. I'm a big yoouuuuuge fan of the movie quoted above. If you don't know, you better ask somebody...'cuz I ain't telling you. Not because I'm ashamed or anything...okay, yeah, maybe I am, just a little, but I've been thinking about this movie a lot lately as I see many of my friends stumble out of relationships they thought would last forever... right around the same time they get bombarded with other people's marriage and baby announcements.

Believe me, I'm not even remotely ready for that kind of stuff, settling down and the like. It's not because I want to go out and screw everything that moves ... I got my partying out of my system years ago, and I was no Paris Hilton even at my wildest (the worst thing I ever did back then was hurl all over my friend's shoes -- in public). It's not that I look down on the institution of marriage either, although I have major issues with it that I touched on briefly in my very first post. It's just that me and my crew of jaded hopeless romantics have taken quite a few hits on the relationship front as of late, and as the big 3-0 looms (or passes) -- the age by which we all thought we'd have "made it" -- and we start taking stock of our lives, some of us have realized that we're way closer to our misspent, Ramen-laden youth than we thought. Which is fine (and fun!) until we start interacting with people with all the trappings of success -- the car, the house, the spouse and kids.

I've been taught my whole life that, as a woman, marriage was pretty much the only goal worth having. Never mind that I learned to read at 3 and labeled a genius before I entered the first grade. I remember being called lazy because I would rather spend my afternoons on homework rather than chores, and hearing that I would never get a husband because I didn't like housework. As my parents' eldest daughter, all that mattered was that I act like a responsible woman of the house. As a result, I grew up with a healthy disdain for all things feminine. I ran around with the boys, rocked sneakers with my dainty school uniforms (which was the ONLY time my mom could get a skirt on me), developed undying obsessions with Voltron, Thundercats, and Double Dare, shunned pigtails for cornrows and flipped over on the playground monkey bars with impunity. With my uniform on. As a teenager, I saw so many of my junior high school classmates get pregnant I stopped counting after 10th grade. What haunted me about all of my friends having babies was not the births themselves, but the distinct notes of pride I heard in their voices when they told me, along with the shocked looks I received when I told them I had none and didn't want any. Is that all there is to life?, I wondered. Is there something wrong with me that I don't agree?

Sadly, those shocked looks only increased over time. As I grew up and the babies kept coming, I noticed something else -- a sad, worn out look in the moms' eyes, anger toward their children they couldn't control, a certain resignation they couldn't explain. Yes, this is all there is...for me. More and more, I began to hear about these young mothers, these friends of mine, getting rid of boyfriends and baby daddies that cannot support them, the strain of the life they chose breaking them day by day. As their children get older, they begin to exhibit that same anger at the world.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's very easy to dismiss this as the same ghetto tragedy that's played out all over the world every single day. But amongst my college peeps, I've noticed a parallel phenomenon: the ever-dreaded wedding invite. Not that would ever begrudge my friends their happiness, but the fact that some of my peeps seem to have gotten their shit together serves as a constant reminder that I haven't, at least not in the traditional sense. I see way too many people who sacrificed for the educations they assumed would grant them an instant ticket to the good life start to wear those same looks of resignation as they realize that piece of paper cannot shield them from life's curveballs. As bills pile up, friends and family fall by the wayside and hearts break again and again, I can almost see the questions swirl in their heads: What was all this shit for? Why can't I get it together? Where the fuck is my happy ending?

That's the thing about happy endings, I've realized: They only appear in fairy tales. They're something to aim for and maybe even dream about, but they're also fucking fiction. I'm about to turn thirty very soon, and while you won't be able to float a raft with my tears, the occasion has managed to light a fire under my ass. It time to take stock and focus on the life I was meant to have...which I know bears no resemblance to the life I thought I'd have, or to the life my parents expected me to have. I've only started to realize that's something to be proud of. Of course, that means that my life won't be tied up in a pretty little bow, but my autobiography is going to kick ass!