Cinders

Edward Burne-Jones – Cinderella

I dreamed that I was carrying my mother around on my hip as though she were toddler. We’d been walking to a restaurant when, after a block or so, she became too weak to continue. I scooped her up. Yeah, she wasn’t featherlight but I managed – we continued on to our nice restaurant lunchy.

Now then, I’ve said a zillion times over that my mother didn’t like me. She loved me, I suppose – I was her kid and all but I was an alien from Planet Strange Oddball-2 to her.

I woke with an epiphany. I realized what my mother had wanted from me all those years ago – not a child with needs of her own but a strong friend she could lean on to get through the battlefield that our family had become.

Sadly, for us both, I hadn’t received the script – I didn’t know that I was to play Aschenputtel to her Lady Tremaine or Mammy to her Scarlett.

Oopsie.

I resented the hell out of her profound lack of support and demands for selfless service. They felt especially mean in contrast to the apparent showers of love and support she gave my siblings. I kept thinking, in my own tiny person way, 'the fuck's up with this shit.

Not Cinderlla but I like this, by
Emma Florence Harrison

I was pissed and wanted to be nothing like my mother. If she was in favor of something, even chocolate-dipped almond biscotti, it was, at the least, suspect. Between this and me Da’s very supportive Poloniun admonition:

to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell, my blessing season this in thee!

 I grew my own way up.

Once he said to her: 'You are like me; you are different from other people. You are Kamala and no one else, and within you there is a stillness and sanctuary to which you can retreat any time and be yourself, just as I can. Few people have that capacity and yet everyone could have it.’
~ Hermann Hesse

We’ve all been in positions where we felt out of place or not accepted for whatever reason. For me, that’s been my life. I’ve always been that person that stood out. And what makes you an outcast is what makes you unique, and you should harness that. Being a black sheep gives you creative license to do sh*t differently.
~ Andre Hueston Mack     

The person who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The person who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever seen before.
~ Albert Einstein

I found an inner strength to fight for myself. It was clear that nobody else would.
~ Tehmina Durrani, My Feudal Lord

It is only when I am alone that I really feel connected to the entire universe.
~ Nurudeen Ushawu

If you have lived your life in such a way that no one has ever found you obnoxious then you have my condolences for you have never really lived.
~ Rock Cowles

It always surprised him when he thought of it later that he did not sink under the load of despair.
~ Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

My dark days made me strong. Or maybe I already was strong, and they made me prove it.
~ Emery Lord, When We Collided

A family without a black sheep is not a typical family.
~ Heinrich Böll, Children Are Civilians Too

Advice to me beautiful grands – Go Your Own Way.