The Cinderella story is one of great magnificence and hope.

A girl, rejected from family, forced down to the floor, finds her prince of love and lives happily ever after. The story of dreams…the story that every little girl aims to follow.

But what do we do when we realize that it’s only a fairy tale? A façade that we’ve yearned to live from our young ages?

I was once Cinderella. I rose up from my ashy bed, from my outcast existence and proved my worth to the world. And for a while, I wore the dress…I wore the sparkling crown…I had the slipper that fit, the slipper that was meant for my foot and only my foot. No one could steal it from me…I was a princess…and midnight would never strike for me.

Then the shoe, made out of glass, shattered from my own weight of disappointment. I was left to step on its jagged remains, feeling the pains of my failures stab into me, making me bleed. I left bloody footprints on the floor, footsteps that can never be washed away and will forever be a symbol of how I have failed. My crown was ripped away from me , sent shattering to the floor along with all my destroyed dreams. My dress, ripped to pieces by the claws that brought down my fall. And as I ran down the glittering steps of my castle, I heard the deep, resounding ring of a bell and I knew that midnight had finally come upon me. Reality had finally come. Its vibrations sent a disturbing echo through my heart, saying, “You couldn’t do it, Cinderella. You couldn’t be the princess you were supposed to be.”

I ran from my castle, from my home of happiness where I thought I had finally escaped the wickedness of my former life. I left the one place that I felt love and praise…a praise that I thought had never even existed. I ran until my bloodied feet collapsed from underneath me, when my strength had finally been depleted.

In the dark forest, a whisper blew into my ear as the wind spoke to me. “Never return, Cinderella. The stroke of midnight has passed and your wishes are now gone.” It was then that I knew…my golden days of Cinderella were over.

And now, lying in the cinders of my former life that was burned away, in the cinders that gave me my very name, I feel the sharp pain of reality. The hand of the clock had decided that Cinderella’s wish had come to an end. My days of being a princess, with my golden crown and sparkling castle of achievement, were all but charred memories left to scatter in the cold, merciless wind. The story of Cinderella, of her custom fit glass slipper, is nothing more than a fairy tale…a wish that might come true, only left to be burned alive by the deadly, truthful stroke of midnight.