A field guide to growing up without growing apart
Hello! This week’s post is going to be short and sweet (a rarity for me…), since I’m fresh off a fantastic weekend with our favorite Merskank and I’m flat out exhausted. It was WONDERFUL to have a fellow princess come stay (especially one who suggests […]
My name is Sleeping Booty and I’m a crusher. A few days ago I read a psychology study circulating the internet that claimed a crush lasting over 4 months crosses over into the territory of love. While I’m not sure I agree, it still got […]
For a long while now I have loved tiaras. Maybe I watched too many Disney movies as a kid, but for me, wearing a tiara made me feel like the most special girl in the world. Now I know what you’re thinking—pageant girl alert. But that’s not it at all. I never participated in beauty pageants and besides the overly huge, so bright you can’t look directly at them, tiaras from pageants do not appeal to me at all. It’s different for me. When I wear a tiara I feel like I’ve stepped into a magical world where anything can happen. I’m going to give you a brief history of my experience with tiaras.
It was sophomore year of college. My parents continued to want to go on trips with me, but I was at the point where I couldn’t bear to spend an entire week alone with them. I love my parents, but their style of travel is very different than mine. So naturally I Convinced the Little Merskank to go along with me. We were going to Sun Valley, Idaho, where absolutely no one knew us, and coincidentally we had recently purchased cheap tiaras from the dollar tree. So we decided we’d have some fun on the trip. We wore our tiaras every day, walking around without a care in the world. And our tiaras also injected us with some extra confidence (as all tiaras do), so we decided to find the most eligible guys in Sun Peaks and attempt to flirt with them. We soon realized that there were not many eligible men of the right age around town, but instead of despairing we did our best to use our wiles on the few male baristas in town. We may not have gotten any phone numbers, but we did get an awesome story out of it.
2.Senior Year
In our senior year, I had a brilliant idea for the naughty princesses. Since we had dubbed ourselves royalty and since it was our last spring together at college, I decided that we all needed tiaras. It would signify our bond, plus it would look awesome. We always dressed up and went out to dinner anyway—why not take it to the next level? It took some convincing but finally we all went to the mall searching for the perfect crowns. This is something that girls should realize too—trying on tiaras is fun. We went back and forth between these two stores debating a deliberating, and finally we all came out crowned and fabulous. Some of my favorite pictures of us are from our times wearing those tiaras together.
3.My Wedding
Now, when I got married, it wasn’t even a question of whether or not I would wear a tiara. It was a given. And so my search began. I didn’t want something huge that would distract people, and I wanted the design to fit the design of my dress. One of the big problems when I started looking though, was that real, wedding tiaras are expensive. Just because they were sold in a bridal shop, they had the nerve to charge $150 bucks. I started to despair that I wouldn’t find what I was looking for. But then, when I went in to my dress fitting and mentioned the problem to the saleslady, she informed me that they had a whole bin of tiaras that were half off on clearance because they’d been display models. I was overjoyed! I dug through the bin in excitement and came out with the most beautifully delicate little tiara that had pearl and rhinestone flowers on it. When I donned the tiara with my wedding dress, I felt complete.
Now because of this love of tiaras, I have been wearing one on my birthday for years now. It seems inevitable. But then I came to this year, my 24th birthday. My husband was taking me out to dinner, so I dressed up in the beautiful long red dress and curled my hair. I looked in the mirror and thought—man, I look classy. Do I really want to put a tiara on? I tried on my various tiaras and took them off again, debating. Maybe it was time I grew up. Maybe I was getting too old to be wearing tiaras on my birthday. I sighed and set aside my tiaras. But then accessing myself one more time, I thought—what am I doing? It doesn’t matter if it subtracts from the classiness of my outfit. I’m not trying to impress anyone. Damn it, nobody can stop me from feeling like a princess on my birthday. The tiaras are just a part of my identity. Maybe someday I will let them go, but for now I proudly adorn my tiara and step out as the princess that I am.
I loved college. It was a wonderful part of my life. I have so many great memories of doing crazy spontaneous things, having house parties, and going to all night diners. And while I was never one to get krunk at bars and start doing […]
I have been reading ‘the Confessions’ by Saint Augustine lately. If you haven’t read it you probably should: Augustine is the best. Not only is he is crazy-wicked smart (ever want to have your mind bent inside out?– try book xi of the Confessions ‘On […]
People always say you are supposed to meet the love of your life in college. Well, I did. But it took me a helluva long while to figure it out. I started dating a sweet and brilliant (if nerdy) guy at the beginning of my sophomore year. It was four months of heavy makeout sessions in dorm rooms and various places around campus, studying together, watching movies, and many Chipotle burrito dates. In other words, pretty much exactly what I wanted from my first real relationship. But as the fourth month approached, I grew restless. His silly personality began to get on my nerves, he frustrated me with his tendency to ramble. And to make matters worse, the relationship seemed headed down the marriage fast-track. If he’d had a glass slipper, he would have jammed it on my foot long ago. He was sure. I was surely not.
Increasingly, I sensed it wasn’t meant to be. A lot of complicated emotions went into this decision, including fear of commitment. I was 20, and terrified of forging ahead with a relationship I wasn’t sure I wanted. And so, as my own case of the Twenty-Something Condition was just developing, I dumped him. I dumped him real good, over breakfast in one of the dining halls, right before Music Theory 101, a class we had signed up to take together. In retrospect, it was not my best move. He cried, I cried, and then…we went to class together? Twice a week for the rest of the quarter? Oh yes, we did.
My prince did not take the break-up well. He was in love with me, and couldn’t wrap his mind around the fact that I didn’t feel the same way. And thus ensued two years of awkwardness, friends with benefits, angry passive aggressiveness, and why-do-I-hate-it-that-I-like-it-when-he-smiles-as-me-across-a-crowded-room confusion. Taylor Swift had yet to write her song “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” but I was singing this anthem loud and clear, except for in the quiet moments when I fantasized about him at night, or tried to sit near him at church. Not next to him, mind you. Just close enough that he knew I was there, which he always did.
My fellow naughty princesses remember this time well, because I nearly drove them out of their minds with my vacillating and backsliding and promising that I was done forever. More than once they would ask me, “Do you want to be with him?”
And I would confidently answer, “No, never.”
They would say, “Are you sure?”
And I would say, “I’m sure.”
But I wasn’t. The what-ifs never completely abated, even though I stood by my decision to end the relationship. Then, during the summer before our senior year, I started spending more time with that prince, mostly in group activities. But I noticed something strange: I really loved being around him. At this point he was about to leave for graduate school in the Middle East, so clearly nothing could happen now. If I was certain I did not believe in getting back together, I was dead-set against long-distance relationships. To acquiesce to both would be unthinkable.
Well, you can guess what happened. A few months later I took the plunge, fired up my webcam, and did what I’d sworn never to do, and it was the best decision I ever made. We dated while he finished a Master’s degree in a faraway foreign land, and all the while people warned me, “Just don’t marry him and move over there with him…”
“It’s not safe. Terrorism. 9-11. Burkas. Women’s rights…”
Their concerns were valid in my eyes. I could never live in a place like that. Marriage might be back on the table, but moving? Never.
You can guess what happened next. I’m now living in a country I’d sworn never to visit, with the man I rejected a thousand times over. It’s a life I truly never imagined I’d have, but it’s been more fun than I could have ever dreamed.
November 7th, 2011: My prince flew around the world to surprise me with my birthday present: an engagement ring. Guess when he bought the ring?
2008.
He bought me a ring all those years before because he was sure. Even though I wasn’t, he never gave up on me. I’ve learned a lot of lessons over the years of knowing this man, and here’s the biggest one of all.
Never say never.
Once upon a time, there were four naughty princesses. These princesses had just begun a new adventure in a land called college, but they had not yet met each other. If they knew they were naughty, it was a shadow of an inkling, an inner […]