Shorts and Snippets

I don’t talk about my boyfriend a lot on social media, purely because nobody wants to be friends with someone in That Couple – you know that one. The one that does stuff like this.

But what he did last night bears repeating.

And this is my damn blog. 

It goes without saying that at this point in the semester, 37 days out from graduation, I am pretty much gone. Done. Completely and thoroughly worn out and used up. Between full time school, my internship and capstone project I need to complete in order to graduate, new nonprofit work, and studying for my LEED Green Associate exam, I am starting to question my sanity. I have had absolutely no time to myself, except for the few minutes a day I go out to water my garden.

After three and a half years, my poor boyfriend has seen every breakdown, meltdown, throw-down I’ve had due to stress. He’s helped me through them all. And somehow he still likes me.

Last night when I was in yet another one of my holy-shit-I-have-too-much-to-do-how-am-I-going-to-survive-until-May-13th moods, he told me this story.

~

Once upon a time, he started, there was a princess who lived in a beautiful castle. She spent all her time taking care of it so that it was the best castle in all the land. People from all over came to see it. 

One day, a prince came along and approached the princess. “Hello,” he said. “I came to see – ”

“Oh yes, you came to see the castle,” the princess said. “Lots of people come to see it.”

“No,” the prince said. “I came to see you. I heard of your beauty and of your dedication. I came to help you with your castle. Just let me in, and we can work together. 

“But you see,” continued the Prince. “You can’t spend all your time cleaning your castle and making it perfect. You have to make time to take care of yourself.”

At this point, I burst into tears. My boyfriend hugged me close to him as I cried, saying nothing until I had calmed down a bit.

“You didn’t let me finish the story,” he said. “Do you want to hear the rest of it?”

He waited until I was done crying and until I had nodded before he continued.

And so, he said, the princess let the prince into the castle, and together they continued to fix it up and clean it out. And the princess made sure she didn’t spend all her time stressing over the castle. And together they lived happily ever after. 

“Oh, and their castle was still so good that it went to regionals, then nationals, then internationals,” my boyfriend added. “And they won, and it was the best in the whole world. But she didn’t spend as much time on it.”

~

Somewhere out there, there is a princess taking a break from perfecting her castle.

Tagged: boyfriend, college, love, princess