From my journal:

When I was young and my mother and I were flying to Belarus for the summer, we had a layover in Amsterdam and took a bus tour through the city. The excursion, of course, included the Red Light District, and seeing the painted ladies in their lingerie, lounging in the windows, I questioned my mother as to their activities. She replied, “Oh, they’re just waiting for their princes to come.”
Eleven years later, I sit in my window frame, clad in lingerie, smoking a cigarette at 3 AM. When I’m stressed, I become manic and cannot sleep, and so I muse over my woes in my journal. In my own way, I very much resemble those ladies, whose glamour and noir air struck some heavy chord, as I mull over the Princes that came and left.
Somehow, the ones I choose are consistently unavailable, emotionally, logistically, or both. Within the last two months, or actually one, I’ve been through three of them, and all have been rather harrowing in their own dark fairytale ways. I’ve been more emotionally naked than I was prepared to be, more attached than I’d care to admit, and far more trusting than I should have allowed myself to be. After all of this, with the added suitcase of recent misadventures, I have a great deal of grieving to do.
Yet, I don’t trust my own emotions after they’ve led me this far, nor do I trust the emotions and sentiments of others. At this point, I want Prince Charming, whatever his incarnation, to stay at bay, and yet, it’s myself I don’t trust to begin healing, because I’m not sure where that process will take me. And so I sit, in limbo, smoking that silly cigarette in the chipped-paint window, mulling over those painted ladies, my affinity to them, and how to unhorse the next handsome Prince that comes galloping by.