With his talk of fairy tales, my brother was trying to be helpful. Rationally, I understood that, appreciated it. The rest of my family had given up. “Seven months, and you are still crying over that loser?” was the common refrain.

“It’s like Rumplestiltskin. Remember? Mom used to read it to us –”

“It is nothing like Rumplestiltskin.”

How could I explain? The movie trailer for Mirror Mirror left me in tears.

“Think about it. He saw her weeping and spun the miller’s daughter’s straw into gold. Because he was like, overcome by her beauty and purity of heart and stuff. And then he felt bad about the whole taking her child thing, so he gave her three days to find out his name.”

“Rumplestiltskin is not a tragic love story. It’s exploitation of labor. And victimization of the poor by the strong. Stop being an idiot.”

On our first anniversary, Andrew gave me a gorgeous color copy of the seventh edition of Children’s and Household tales, shrugging off my exclamations of surprise and delight with a flip, “It’s paper, right?”

“Dude, it’s a fairy tale. About being pretty and clever. Why is everything about oppression?”

“Where’s your reading comprehension? He slaves over straw for three freaking days, and gets a necklace, a ring and big helping of humiliation for his troubles. Meanwhile the fat cow gets to marry way the hell up to queen! It’s ridiculously unfair. He never should have stopped for her crying. She doesn’t even thank him!”

I met Andrew in the library of the community college I was hoping to transfer out of. I met him again eight years later in the same library, one class shy of finally finishing my degree.

“You’re impossible.”

“And you’re not helping.”

“Gloria, you know what? I get that your situation sucks. Really, I do. But for one, it’s not my fault, and two, you don’t need to be a dick to everyone else because he was a dick to you. I’ll talk to you later. Hope you feel like a human being by then.”

He hung up.

My wedding band was a filigreed straw chaff design. I never took it off. It had cut into my finger, scarring the skin. At least I had my eyes. But my brother was right, I didn’t feel human.

I didn’t have the energy to be upset about more than one thing at a time. The e world had narrowed to my pain, my loss. In the forest, without a compass.

If it was true that this too would pass, eventually I would feel guilty. Not now. Not with the divorce papers sitting on my table. No kindly animals to save me, no godmother to guide me. No one to stitch me back up. Just Andrew, gone.

"June 11 – Sew "  in "15 for 15 (June 2012)"