Princess Post

Once up a time, long long ago there was a pretty pretty princess with long blonde hair, lots of freckles and a castle full of energy. She was a happy princess, she loved the world and everyone in it; she was very bouncy and playful. She played with kittens and butterfly’s and flourished for a while. But as time passed, the freckles and energy faded, she encountered a few ogres, kissed a few frogs and her love for the world was challenged.

After the world would hand her another blow, the princess would cry huge drippy tears that distorted her face and reddened her eyes, but she was resilient and always bounced back eventually, usually only after filling up buckets and buckets with her tears. And, she was never ever afraid to let the tears fall, no matter who might see them.

Then one day, after a particularly painful abrasion, the princess found herself unable to cry openly or not at all. Oh the tears made themselves known, that wasn’t the problem. They stung and stabbed at her eyes. They lumped her throat and caused her jaw to tighten. But no matter how they battered her, she was simply unable to allow them to actually fall from her eyes. She would fight them back with all her might, getting angry at the tears for embarrassing her and making her feel vulnerable to whomever might bare witness to them. She would look away as the tears rose and fell in her throat, squeeze her eyes tightly, and remain silent until they passed. It was like she was helpless to will the tears to fall even if she wanted them to.

At first, this was a great puzzle to the princess. She’d never thought herself as emotionally capable of so many of her fellow princesses seemed to be. After all, some of those princesses had really been through the ringer and they didn’t blubber like a baby every time they got a little scratch. She knew she was a soft spirit, sensitive, overly so some might say. But here she was, almost over night, somehow suddenly a much less externally emotional being then she once was. Even if her lip was quivering half the time, a colossal shift had occurred and she felt robotic in nature. This made the sweet princess very anxious because she didn’t want to build up a wall that even she couldn’t climb. Plus, like her beloved hugs, peanut butter and wine; those tears had been her friends for so many years. They’d served her well in the past, cleansed her and allowed her to sleep all those restless nights when the wounds ached loudly.

The princess wondered if it was possible to cry a life time of tears in a few short years. Had she used them all up? Was there a quota and she’d already reached hers? Maybe the gods had frowned on all the self-indulgent water works and cursed her with dry eyes for an eternity? And then, they came. They came in great rivers and floods and waterfalls. They came on a day she would normally be celebrating, but instead she was mourning in great anguish. Her heart burned and begged for relief from all the pain she felt, all that she’d been stuffing down for months. She sobbed until her eyes seared and could not produce even one more tear. After, she slept. She woke up in agony, but at least the tears had finally come to her rescue when she needed them most.

From this, the princess learned that there will be ogres, there will be heart break, the tears will come whether she wants them to or not, there is no shame in this. Like all creatures, great and small, she is still learning and all learning must have a curve. We have to find a way to release the dark to make room for the light. It’s true that the princess is more cautious and tender then she might have once been, but that’s ok because she’s all the stronger from the learning curve. Life has a way of doing that to a girl.