Once upon a time, there was a little girl that stole a book about a mistreated servant who became a princess.
It was woven with magic and danger, curses and ogres, and a prince so kind and steady that a girl could believe—maybe someone like that would come for her, too. It had everything a young heart was told to want: a girl who suffered, a girl who stayed good, and a girl who was finally chosen and swept away from all of it.
The young girl must have read it more than thirty times. Some days, she would finish the book and turn it right back to the first page to begin again.
Eventually, the spine cracked and peeled, the corners curled from too many dog-eared pages, and the cover began to fall away—just like the illusion that this kind of story could ever belong to her.
That little girl was me.
And like all little girls raised on stories, I wanted to see myself in the heroine. I wanted to imagine myself in beautiful dresses and ballroom escapes, in secret kindness being rewarded, in someone—anyone—seeing me and saying, "You were made for more than this."
But I didn't need to imagine everything.
I was the girl in the story, in more ways than I should have been. I had a step-mother who hated me— two step-sisters who looked down their noses with sugar-coated cruelty. Always louder. Always right. Always better.
And I took it from them.
But there was no curse on me. Not a magical one, anyway.
I wasn't bound to obedience by spell or sorcery– or "witchcraft," as my Step-Mother would call it.
I obeyed because I was taught to.
Because I was told that God required it.
There were no talking animals to comfort me. No pumpkins turned to carriages. No glass slippers glittering with destiny. There was no fairy godmother hiding in the garden to, "Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo," my problems away.
There was only a house filled with rules I never got to write, and a version of faith where obedience meant survival.
Where women were vessels created for men.
Where silence was godliness.
And suffering meant you were getting closer to holiness.
They didn't need spells to tame me– they used scripture.
They taught me that a woman's purpose was to submit. That her virtue was in silence, in service, in childbearing. I was raised to be a wife before I was ever allowed to be a girl. To keep sweet. To keep still. To keep pleasing.
There was no magic in my story.
No grand transformation.
Because in this version of the fairy-tale, Cinderella snapped.
And there was no prince riding in to save me.
But there was a boy who helped.