Ideals

We all have an ideal as to how we want our life to come out. We all dream and hope that our ideal will come true. But we so easily forget something. We should be careful what we wish, because we just might get it.

What happens when achieving the dream is worse than not achieving it.

There was once a pretty little girl, in a beautiful pink dress at a lovely little party. It was her first one. She was so excited. Everyone commented on how pretty she looked, her flowing blonde hair and her dazzling blue eyes. She at the tender age of seven was the life of the party.

She walked around the room saying hi to everyone and drawing their compliments as gracefully as her age would allow her to. Suddenly one of her relatives, one she did not recognize, stopped her and asked her what she wanted to be when she grows up.

"I want to be a ballerina." she said, "Also, I'm going to marry a prince!"

"A Prince, well, that would be nice now wouldn't it." said the familiar stranger.

"Mhmm! A very handsome prince," repeated the little girl. She shuffled a little bit and her relative stood back up and rejoined the conversation she was in beforehand.

The little girl slowly began to grow up. Ballet never worked out but she always held tight the dream of one day marrying a prince. She would lay in bed late at night dreaming of royal balls and magnificent dinners inside a luxurious palace.

When she turned sixteen she was even more beautiful now then she was before. Every guy was tripping over themselves to date her. She accepted most of them but was always disappointed none of them were her prince.

One day, as luck would have it, she was sitting alone in a restaurant, looking all the more stunning than ever in the past. She caught the eye of a young man. They talked for a while. They even went on a few dates. She somehow enjoyed him more than any other guy. She, for a while, forgot about her prince.

But lady luck had a big surprise in store for her. Over a lovely dinner, the young man made his confession. He was not an American. He was only here on a holiday. He was the Prince of Moldovia.

"You are what?" the girl exclaimed

"The Prince of Moldova, a small but great nation."

She nearly fainted. "But you will be going home soon, I shall never see you again."

"Not true," said the young Prince. "We can run away together. I can get you citizenship in Moldova, a passport and everything you could need. Please come."

She could not resist, she ran away from her parents, flew to Moldova and from there married the prince in a small, subtle ceremony to keep her parents from finding out. She was ushered into the job of being the Princess of Moldovia.

Everything was as she had dreamed. The balls, the dinners, the palace seemingly made of pure gold. She felt dizzy with excitement. She wrote a letter to her mother, telling her to send all her stuff over. She even used the seal of Moldova to let her know that it was official.

Her mother while upset that she had run away was so dazzled by her daughter being a princess that she forgot all about the past. She eagerly mailed all her clothes and other miscellaneous items over.

One morning the young princess decided that she would take a walk in the royal gardens. She told her prince that she was going. Immediately he shouted a loud bellowing "No!"

She turned to face him, "Why not?"

"You shall have breakfast with with the royal family and the reporters."

"I do not feel like having breakfast."

"That is too bad. You are on display for the nation, that is your only purpose, live up to it!" there was clear anger in the Prince's voice.

"No, I can go where I please!"

He struck her with a closed fist, "No you may not!" He turned and left.

She did go to the breakfast but retired early to pour through the clothes she had just received. As she opened the last trunk up came the Prince, he was not apologetic.

"You disobeyed me, people have been banished for less. I care for you, but you are only here to further my image. You are nobody."

"How can you say you care for me?"

"I do, but I care for my country more."

You care for nothing but yourself!" screamed the young girl.

He struck her again, sending her face first into the open trunk. As things came back into focus she realized that on the top of the pile of clothes lay her pink dress, from when she was a little.

With that blow something shattered. Not her jaw, not her spirit, but her dream, her dream of marrying a prince. She clutched the dress tight with her left hand and braced for another blow, it did not come. But neither did an apology.

She grabbed the dress and stood up. "You think you are all big because you are a prince! You think you are so big you can hit defenseless women?!"

There was no reply.

He backed up a step.

"I'll show you how big you are!"

She took the dress and with it, wrapped it around the throat of the young prince and squeezed the very life out of him. There was no scream, only a brief struggle and a subtle grunt.

As the prince's body lay lifeless before her she walked to a corner and threw herself down in it. She sat staring at the body.

The beauty drained from her face, her blonde hair turned ghost white. Her eyes turned black as coal. When the guards arrived to investigate, the prince's disappearance they hardly recognized the woman in the room with the corpse.

It wasn't the young girl with dreams of being a ballerina that paid for the crime of murder, but a lifeless soul agonized by realizing her dreams.