My name isn't really Cinderella, but it's what they called me to make fun of me. They put me to work, made me clean their rooms, their house, but look where I am now. I am the one who won. I went to the ball and met the prince. He saw me for who I truly am, and now I'm married to him.

When I look down at the ring on my finger, I am still amazed and unsure as to what this all means. I'm no longer a poor girl whose mother died. I'm a princess now. Like in all the stories, I get to live "happily ever after."

But as I sit here and write in my journal, a thought has come to m. It's something that's dark and I would never say this out loud for fear that I might break the spell: I'm not happy. Part of me is afraid that I've made the wrong choice. That I picked the prince just to get out of my bad situation and that I've run from the fire into the frying pan.

The prince goes off for days to hunt, and when he comes back, I smell the alcohol on his breath, and I can smell the perfume. It's not mine.

As a child, all I wanted was for my mother to stay with me, but she ran off into the faerie world and died of yellow fever.

And here I am now, a princess with jewels, dresses, and married.

It's not that I want more. It's not that I'm not grateful. It's not any of that. I want to feel something and to be alive. I want to visit France and to see the cathedral of Notre Dame. To stand instead it and to see the sunlight stream through the massive stained-glass windows.

For now, I put that voice inside away and hide it. I've locked it up and buried the key. Fear is a powerful emotion that I cannot deny. I don't want to go back to what I had before and I'm not quite happy with what I have now. There, I've said it.

I'm a woman now. I'm 18 and can do and say whatever I want. (Then why am I not happy? Why do I look elsewhere when the prince and I are together? I can tell that he is only with as he's looking for a child. I do not fulfill him like the women whose perfume is on his clothes.)

With everything in front of me, I don't want to go back, and I don't really want to stay...

So what do I want to do?

Really, what do I want?

I want to be free to see the world and to let my imagination be wild and free. I want to see something that I've never seen before and I want to not be here.

But I am, at least for now.

A thought has been building in my mind and it's silly, but I want to write about it anyway. I wonder what I will be like years and years in the future. What will I think about when I look back at this time? Will I regret what I've done? Will I be happy where I made it? I wt to go and meet the future me and I want to ask her: What should I do?

I know it's silly. But what if I could do that? What would she tell me?

I wonder...

I just heard the door close in the chamber across the hall. The prince is back. I have to go now. I don't want him to find me writing this. Goodbye, for now. Until next time, until there's a time when I can take all that's my head and I could share it like the rush of spinning in a circle on a beach as the sun is rising up above the water, and there's laughter, and joy. That's what I want. Joy. And love. Always love.

If I do make it into the future, please remember me.

Je t'aime.