Dennis McBride

A Fairy Tale

 

     I want someone to come along and pull me out of my shyness and low self esteem. Someone like the Royal Family and then maybe the world press and then I want to make love to a real prince and have a pair of small kings and then I want to continue therapy by breaking the record for appearances on the cover of People magazine and then I want my marriage to fail because I become more interesting and real and scintillating than my husband and the pale pallor of his royal family, which the whole world will perceive and support and then I want to be able to speak publicly about my suicidal thoughts and eating disorders and then, instead of having to suffer the stigma and shame that others do and prove that I meet the diagnostic criteria to qualify for benefits, I will be received with unanimous sympathy for my courageous revelation and even more luster will be added to my crown, which I will then give up and but go on to become the queen of everyone’s heart and then after the divorce I want to meet another millionaire who will give me a quarter of a million dollar ring and everyone will feel more sorrow for me  because they will understand how the mentally ill keep repeating the same self-destructive patterns in their lives. This time I want him to be in oil or something and have a dashing style and he will finally bring me happiness, ending my tragic search for fulfillment. Then I want to die, trying to escape pain or pursue pleasure,  maybe in a fashion-suggesting ecstatic abandon, and I want it to be instantaneous without suffering or foreknowledge. Then maybe if Mother Teresa would die within a few days of me and then if maybe an astounding eruption and outpouring of real love for me could, by contrast, outshadow the proper display of dutiful affection for her so that people would still somehow know that, while Mother Teresa’s fire all along was for Jesus, mine was, well -- I was one of them, was miserable and masturbated even as I waved from the carriage, and then if the legitimate press and the voice of the people would force the Royal Family, for the first time in England’s history, to lower the flag to half mast for a non- royal person and then if all the king’s horses and all the king’s men would carry my beloved body past a million mourners and into Westminster Cathedral where everyone would pray for me and get me straight into heaven without a passport.