My Kingdom

I thought being a princess meant huge castles to explore, beds swathed in voluminous canopies and curtains, swans, glassy lakes and small boats to paddle around in.  I dreamed of spooky turrets filled with ghosts and fairy godmothers, Libraries with shelves of books so high they needed rolling ladders to get to them, dining halls filled with happy people and giant fireplaces to make them cozy.

That was when I was very small, when Sleeping Beauty and Rumpelstiltskin were my go-to sources and all dark times were guaranteed to end up happily ever after.

My father, bless his heart, felt it necessary to fill me in on the draftiness, dampness and lack of modern plumbing that defined old castles while I was still relatively young.  Life tried to disabuse me of the rest.

I suffer from the princess and pea syndrome, meaning everything about my being is super sensitive.  Nothing else about me is royal, or so I thought.

It turns out that the richness of life is there for the taking.  Happily ever afters abound as long as I keep going far enough, castles can be quite small and all people have problems, princesses, or not.

My own insecurities are the biggest monsters in the moat, my nightmares are the clouds that move in and out, but all kingdoms, humble as they may be -- are defined by the person who rules over them.