Fairytales.

 Ever since my divorce, there has been a thread of questions on my mind that I know are based in fear and doubt, but they come up so often that I have a hard time cutting the thread and throwing them away. I know it is likely hard to dispel these thoughts because I have reinforced the negative, faulty core beliefs about myself for so long that I readily and easily can convince myself to believe a lie. Manipulative relationships are the worst - including the one I sometimes live with myself. 

My thread of dark questions is related to a loss of hope: Is it really possible that someday, someone will want to love and accept me for who I am, who will actually want to be loyal to me for the rest of his life? Does that actually, really exist?

You know, like a fairytale? 

A thought recently came to my mind that I have clung to ever since my most recent battle with that dark slew of questions : 

Alissa, you have permission to believe in fairytales.

I often find myself thinking that I want to marry a best friend - someone who I spend time with because I want to and he wants to. But so often in this dating world, every time I want to be friends with a guy, he never continues the friendship. No matter how hard I try to be kind, to reach out, to invite, to just be a human being - he doesn't reciprocate. It leaves me to wonder if guys don't trust me, or perhaps they don't like me at all and that is why they reject me. What is so harmful about wanting to just be his friend first? 

That's when I tell myself that it's okay to believe in fairytales. And actually, I have the permission to do so. Fairytales in books and movies are so wonderful and yet so heart wrenching. They are so beautiful and yet they bring the tears so quickly when I find myself asking if that really does happen in life. Do men really want to win the girl's affection? Do they really care about her kindness and personality and not just her looks? 

I have always believed I'm plain. I've always compared myself to my beautiful sisters. They have the most gorgeous faces and I have always just had mine - usually red, dotted with acne and freckles, and never knowing how to put on makeup because I feel awkward in it. Almost like I'm someone I'm not when I wear it. I always used to tell myself that I hoped my personality could shine through what I lacked in beauty. The only man who ever told me I was beautiful later turned on me and said I wasn't the model wife he had wanted. And he was disappointed in that. I hear his voice every time I look at myself in the mirror. Not because I want to hear it, but because it hurt so badly when it came from my husband, the one man whom I loved the most and hurt me the deepest. 

And I think, looking back on that moment….that was the day I stopped believing in fairytales. That moment when he wouldn’t let me leave the car until he had said what he wanted to. That moment when I wasn’t sure if I would be safe or not. That moment, there, in the dark, where no one knew where I was…That moment when I could no longer look at him, for fear of his ever piercing glance. 

Fairytales. I think I hope that they are true, but I don’t have the courage to believe that they are. 

And maybe, by the word “fairytale,” I really just mean a story where both people are so intimately and emotionally and spiritually connected to one another that no matter what happens, they’ll fight to keep their love strong. What else in this world could be better to fight for than love? Even the gospel of Jesus Christ is built in the love of God and the love of the Saviour. Surely, the life I live can reflect but a small aspect of that love. 

Yet, here I am…incapable of even loving myself. 

And so, I sit and repeat quietly, with tears in my eyes, “Alissa….It’s okay to believe in fairytales…”