Today was a fairy tale

Just like those guilty pleasure songs that I used to roll down my window and fling out my arm to. Something about the wind whipping through my fingers, everything around me became so alive. If I didn't known better, I would think that I had traveled back a year through time. We were still playing card games, I was still pretending to watch tv while really smiling at you playing your game. Once, only, I lost it. I saw those words and saw your hurt and I lost it, silently turning my back to the camera and letting the salt stream down. You told me I'm worth it, told me I'm pretty, told me all the things you're supposed to say. More then that, you meant them.

Day by day I get better, day by day I relearn myself. Now, I don't flinch at those heavy lace up boots and crew cut. Now, I can think about the slanted ceiling and rough smell practically, from a writer's point of view. I could still write murder, if I wanted, but the past is a tool now and no longer the cause. I hear that he's hurting, I hear that he crumbling like I did once. Used to be I waited for this day, prayed for it even. Now I feel pity, genuine pity. I hope he doesn't lose himself, I hope he wakes up to the world. It's a passing thought, gone before I even realize it's there. We live in different universes now, and everything is as it should be.

None of this makes sense, I know. It is 12:58 pm and I will be up again at six to drive myself to my thoroughly frustrating dream job. I am babbling, and it is your fault. I'm so unused to happiness, to contentment, how should I know what to do with it? I am always as voraciously happy as I am sad, it's the actress in me. You can take the girl out of the theater, love, but you can't take the theater out of the girl.

Soon I will be driving, and we will be dancing, and then we will be alone. Too soon again I will be crying and driving, then throwing myself exhausted onto clay stained sheets and pulling your hoodie close in this 106 degree weather. This fall, perhaps, things will be different. As for right now, I'm just happy. Well Miss Swift, I did it, I found somebody today who actually will treat me well.

Postscript- I'm back again. I'm not even sure you knew I was gone, but you're right you know. I can't give this up, it's who I am.

Exeunt

Mama. I don’t know why you have to make everything so difficult. I look at having this baby as the opportunity of a lifetime. Sure, there may be some risk involved. That’s true for anybody. But you get through it and life goes on. And when it’s all said and done there’ll be a piece of immortality with Jackson’s looks and my sense of style…I hope. Mama, please. I need your support. I would rather have thirty minutes of wonderful than a lifetime of nothing special.

That was my thirty minutes of wonderful. For the first, and probably only, time in my life I was a heroine. Yes, there was teased hair and awful high wasted 80's jeans and a horrid wig. But for once I wasn't a chorus girl, and when I died, people cried. I spent my whole life wanting that, and I will probably spend my whole live reliving those few moments. As time goes by I will forget the nights that we did our lines in circles, the nights we wanted to kill our fellow cast members, the nights we caused the director to want to go into early retirement. I will remember the smell of fancy face paint and hairspray, how hot that vest was under the lights, how that one night everything just slipped perfectly into place.
I have spent seven years now learning that I am not an actress, and I will spend fifty more at this rate. But, as the years pass me, so will the roles. Too late for Juliet now, and soon too late for Shelby too. Desdemona, my favorite, has maybe two years left. I am getting too old for the heroine, people get dried up faster in this business then in any other one in the world. So, through high school college, a job...somehow I still read these lines, hug my pillow, and cry.

What can I say. The stage is a fickle mistress.

Truth

You're still the one I want to spend the rest of my life with.

Girl code

Ladies, I know you'll agree with me on this. We women have this horrible tendency to betray, hurt, and spite each other. The wonderful terrible high we get from it is kind of addicting. But there is a better feeling even then this. You know those girls that have betrayed you? The one that stole your boyfriend, the one that spilled your confidences, the one that grabbed that guy before you could even smile? A year or two later, perhaps more, you happen across a picture of their new man. He's ugly as hell. And then, you think to yourself, "Karma's a bitch, and so are you."

Hey, I'm just saying the thing that we all think.

My own Jane Austen Novel

Three or four years past now, I attend my first country dance. I was staying a group of other young gentlemen and ladies at the time, and we traveled just outside the town we were staying in to a little inn. The entire evening was magical; it started to rain just before we reached our destination and stepping out of our vehicle the young gentlemen held umbrellas and jackets over our heads with not regard for their own personal comfort. At that young age, it was positively the most romantic thing that had ever happened to me. The dancing was stately and elegant, but with plenty of time for giggles and youthful exuberance between steps. Leaving, I thought this was surely something I would make a habit of.

Over the next year I tried in vain to find another country dance. It wasn't until I entered school in a small town in Pennsylvania that I found anything remotely similar in style or nature. It was at this school that I discovered Contra dancing, a derivation of the more formal country dances. Every week I went, somehow when the gentlemen swung me I could smile and everyone would forget to be too grown up to break out in laughter. Months I went, all through the fall and winter. Then, come spring, a young man I had never seen before entered the class.

I noticed him right away, he was standing to one side of the table looking confused. I won't deny he was handsome, and when the instructor charged me with teaching him the steps I blushed at my good fortune. At the closing waltz he again asked for my hand. "Let me teach you something new;" he smiled and before I knew it we were flying over the floor in a ballroom sashay. He came back again and again, and an attachment slowly began to form.

Then came the summer months, we exchanged short correspondences, but his time training for the army kept us from having anything more then a quick message here and there. But surely, the next fall, we would pick off just where we had left off. And we did. Except that now things were blurred, there were rumors and the idea of another girl. Over the summer he had led me to believe that she was of no matter, an old attachment, but now I came to understand that she was much more.

Then came the party. It was an all day affair, starting with a picnic lunch and lasting into the evening with dancing and plenty of refreshments. A close friend and I grew tired in the late afternoon; we wanted to nap and discuss all the things close female companions like to talk about, namely whether or not my young man was worth believing. Luckily for us that afternoon, and luckily especially for me, one young man offered his room for our convince. He stayed with us, and though at the time I thought it to be a bit of an annoyance, he intrigued me slightly. He was quite good looking and though I had been to that house many times before, I didn't recall really seeing him but for a couple of times. I must have made an impression because after that evening he kept after me.

He seemed like a genuine courteous young man, something hard to come by in today's world. What perhaps intrigued me even more though were the rumors of his illicit past. He was one of the dark characters from one of my novels, A Rhett Butler come to sweep me off my feet and carry me away. And yet, I refused to be swept so easily. As things with the first young man fell apart, I nursed my heartache and began to see all the good things that made the second one different. He held my hand while I cried, he told me the bold truth whatever the cost to him. His eyes had a devious glint in them, but he looked at me as no one ever had before.

We started going on walks, long walks, after nightfall down long deserted roads. He was always careful to keep me on the inside safe from danger of any passing traffic, he held my hand and together we counted the stars. Those nights I lost myself in the mischievous glimmer of his eye, and the warm safety of his hand. Though my heart had been nearly broken when we first found each other, he stayed by my side and taught me all the reasons why I was worthy of love.

It has almost been two years since that party, and tonight I found myself back at the little inn dancing country dances. The music and the dances and the people were all the same. I laughed and talked and gossiped, but at the end of the dance I realized the romance I had felt years ago wasn't there anymore. I had left it behind in Pennsylvania, with my very own Mr. Darcey

Middle Plantation and Romance

I never thought I would give up an accurately recreated pair of stays for one hot sticky day at the beach in a 21st century bathing suit. All of a sudden, I can't even get excited about bustles anymore. Pleats and under-petticoats and hoops are all worthless in comparison to brown eyes and a jeep that perpetually smells a little like fast food.

What's happened to me, a year and a half ago I wouldn't have recognized myself today.

I used to be in love with fashion, with history, with hopeless romance and intrigue.

Now I'm in love with a man.

One man.

What's more, I think he's worth it.