True-Love

As a young American girl born in the late 90's, Mary's first experience with "True-Love" was shared with about a couple million girls around her age. The old VHS tapes of Disney Studio's Classics collection.

Wide eyed and heart beating wildly she watched as the princess was swept into the prince's arms, freed from a life of servitude, rescued from an endless enchanted sleep, saved from an overbearing father. Mary watched as the perfect relationship was a damsel I'm distress, and Prince Charming coming to rescue her. The answer to life's problems was a whirlwind romance with some hottie with a castle and BOOM: Instant Happily Ever after with maybe a sequel or two to elaborate on how good they got it.

Her young and gullible mind drank it up. Mary dressed up as a princess for every Halloween. She read version after version of those age old tales, and begged her parents for a front row seat to every new showing that Walt Disney had to offer; In the princess department that is.

As she grew, and her fairytale version of Love developed, Mary noticed subtle changes in Disney's new releases. The Heroine's began to be more deserving of their glory. They had strengths of their own. And probably the most devastating to a braces and high school sweatshirt wearing Mary, they stopped ending up with a man at all.

Disney was trying to rectify the mindset they had so absentmindedly blessed an entire generation with, but for poor Mary Shuman the damage had already been done.

Mary dove into variations of the tales, watched countless videos of Disney fan theory, and by the ripe old age of seventeen even tried her hand with creating some fan fiction of her own, desperate to give the characters she loved, some love of their own.

These Women couldn't remain alone! They needed men! If not to solve their problems for them, then to complete their happily ever after!

Love became synonymous with a perfect life, and marriage was Mary's end goal. She'd meet her Prince Charming, he'd carry her off to his castle, they'd conquer adversity, then she'd live every girls dream of becoming a princess, and getting her fairy tale life.

It was a Disney colored lens, and it distorted reality just enough, that when Mary turned eighteen, and was in her parents eyes, finally old enough to date. Mary was swept off her feet by the first Boy to promise her the moon.

She clung to him, he was her night in shining armor, and a couple texts a week was pretty much all the effort he needed to have the Love obsessed Mary, wrapped around his finger.

But reality has a brutal way of knocking our rose colored glasses off of our faces, before grinding them under its heals, and crushing them into the dirt. For Mary, it seemed that she was to be stripped of her dreams all at once.

The first hard knock to Mary's unchallenged philosophy was when her sister Julia's fiancé, was caught cheating on his bride to be. Mary was disgusted, and saw first hand the negative effects that thinking you are in love can have, when Julia refused to leave her room for about a month. In Mary's mind, she began to consider if perhaps Julia's fiancé was the villain in her older sisters story, and Julia's True-Love was still out their waiting to sweep her sister off her feet. But it seemed that her beloved sister had a type, and that type was Loser. Again, and again, and again Julia found herself in and out of horrible relationships.

Yet still Mary believed their was a Prince Charming out their for Julia, she just needed to wise up and start looking to the Princely types.

The next and more damaging blow, was the divorce of Mary's parents. It seemed that Love wasn't the fairy tail it cracked upped to be, and for no reason two people who have gone through thirty years of love and life together, can decide that if they ever saw each other's faces again, it would be too soon.

Mary was devastated, Love didn't work like this. Love was the answer. Love wasn't supposed to be just another step in the equation. It wasn't a formula. It was the end all be all, wasn't it?

And the final blow that shattered that vision of what Mary believed love should be, was when her first, and only boyfriend Of three years, broke up with her.

"What?" Mary said through teary eyes. Her dark brown eyes were bloodshot, and the combination of running mascara and her misery left dark circles under her eyes.

She stood in her boyfriend Josh's apartment. Signs of their five year relationship manifested in the framed pictures of their adventures she had given him as gifts, and the monogrammed throw pillows of '"M+J", she had also given him as a gift. Along with various other trinkets that spoke to all who entered of their undying love.

"I just think that maybe it's time for us to move on with our lives." Josh sighed as he ran his fingers through his ashen blonde hair. It hung just below his ears. He wore jeans with an unbuttoned checkered shirt, a tight black tank underneath revealed his well framed physique. His usual half grin that made Mary's heart flutter was replaced by a nervous look.

Mary sniffed her sobs back. In all the years they'd dated Josh had only seen the tears reserved for sad movies, and the droplets of the overjoyed. But in the months since her parents divorce, Mary had no reservations, and it had been ugly-cry central.

"Do you mean like get married?" Mary's golden Latina skin was puffy and red. Her voice croaked when she talked.

Josh looked pained. "I mean like see other people."

Mary's wailing unleashed itself. The small dam of hope that had formed broke. "Why!" She choked.

"Because of this!" Josh defended his position. "We had a really great thing going, we liked each other, maybe even loved and then your parents got divorced and you lose it. I can't handle you anymore! Whose Parents aren't divorced! It is not that big of a deal!" Josh was yelling now.

Mary cried harder.

"I can't do this to myself any more, I can't be here for you, I'm going insane, you are driving me insane. Please just go!"

Mary turned and ran, she cried all the way home.

Parked outside her family home, the house now shared between herself her single mother and her single sister. Mary shut her car off, leaned her forehead against the steering wheel, and sobbed until she felt like she could sob no more.

The final pieces of her already cracked heart shaped glasses shattered. The world seemed gray, and had lost that rosy warm glow that had seemed to softly kiss Mary's reality. She was left with a gaping hole, in her life, in her dreams, in her self. Love was a lie, and it had always been one.