"there are no happy endings, nothing ever really ends"

 

I spent my entire childhood thinking and dreaming of nothing but Disneyland. I have mentioned this a couple of times now. I have also mentioned that I had a fucked up childhood. I score 10/10 on the CDC's ACE test. It was an extraordinarily horrible childhood in what has been a relatively terrible life, and most of the adults around me wrote me off at a very early age as "not going to make it." Some adults from that time period also cannot believe I am still alive to this very day! How nice of them! LOL. There were very, very few things that were normal, and getting to go to Disneyland was one of those few things. I know it's very difficult for people who have never struggled with violent break-ins, food insecurity, or have ever lived in abject terror (least of all in their First Five) to understand from your gated community or your gentrified coffee shop with the $8 latte. It's easy to scoff other people's touchstones of security when you become completely derailed over very slight inconveniences, but I digress.

So very, very few things in my life were safe, or normal, and Disneyland was one of them.

But then shit started to go sideways. Donating to Don't Say Gay (and it PASSING) and everyone just having fucking amnesia over it. The hollow, predatory, and exploitative "inclusion" efforts the Disney Adults just lapped up and continued to talk over the people whom it actually effected because they were too busy congratulating themselves. It was making sacrifices that hurt to be able to go to Disney, only to have half of the park not even working. It was the absolutely abysmally pathetic way they handled certain other things. It was a lot of things.

I think I went to Disneyland for the last time for my birthday this year. I can't see myself ever going back again. Disneyland has always been something I loved more than anything, my one place in this world where I felt safe and normal. I know that this is utterly unfathomable to someone who did not have my or a similar childhood. I know you cannot possible fucking comprehend what it has been like to be on this planet for 35 years and only feel completely safe a small handful of times. It is a big deal for me to lose something so special to me. I never got to fully be a child, and I hardly gotten to live my life, so losing even a small part of what little I have is absolutely devastating. I know other kids get to dream of being princesses and the Castle, or they get to have dreams about their future careers, but I never had that. I never had any dreams because I wasn't allowed to. I never even secretly let myself because I couldn't handle how crushing I knew the disappointment was going to be. SO, yeah, losing something like Disneyland or not being able to become a mother after all hit so much harder.

And, look, I get that most people are not going to get it. Their parents are still married. They've never dealt with food insecurities. Their pelvic floors aren't collapsing right now because of childhood sexual abuse. Even the fact that I went to Disney as much as I did feels like some kind of miracle--as if there is no way that the childhood I had and Disneyland could have existed in the same timeline. I thought it was a love that was going to last forever--like honey in the tombs. I know intellectually that corporations are not our friends, but it doesn't make it hurt any less.

The 40th anniversary of The Last Unicorn is next Saturday. I keep thinking about its take home messages of mortality and losing things we truly love so deeply with no  neat resolutions.

"there are no happy endings, nothing ever really ends"