Girls in particular will get this next one.
Did we not learn anything from Cinderella’s ugly step sisters? Of course I am not calling any of us ugly, but really, why were they so adamant to make that darn glass slipper fit? My friend and I had a conversation about this this past summer, why, even if the shoe does not fit, do we insist on jamming our foot into it? No, I am not talking about those killer heels that I found at DSW the other night, I am simply talking about guys. Cliche, yes, but guys are like shoes. There are those shoes that don’t fit but we kill ourselves to  try and make them, the shoes that fit but they hurt the whole time we are wearing them, and then there are those shoes that we simply grow out of… we loved them while they lasted but now they only exist in old photographs.

Shoes that don’t fit

My roommates, best friends and I subject ourselves this kind of torture on a regular basis. We meet guys, nice guys, guys you might want to bring home to meet the parentals and yet you just don’t click. Why?! Why can’t we fall in love with the guy who has it all together, the guy who has the killer resume and looks extremely good on and off paper? Its especially disheartening when we meet a “keeper” but then try as we might, we have no interest in keeping them. I haven’t figured this one out yet, why we are so determined to try to wedge our little feet into these kinds of shoes, we will deal with being unhappy or faking it because they look good on us, they send a message to people, they show off that we are capable of having the whole ensemble. But are we ever fully happy with these shoes? Do we ever fully get to love them? Sometimes I think, as hard as it is to except that we don’t always adore the guy who comes off as prince charming and will treat us like a princess, maybe it is best that when we try these kinds of shoes on and we know they don’t fit that we leave them on the shelf. That we don’t even buy them because we know eventually we will have to use the receipt.

Shoes that just plain hurt

Girls are idiots a lot of the time. Being one, I can attest. We have all met those guys who give us attention and they make us feel special but they hurt us in so many ways. They are the pair of heels that are too high for comfort, the ones that leave us blistered at the end of the night. We cry over these ones, our friends yell at us to come to our senses, but we never listen and we just shove themselves into these small and crowded menaces.

In the original story book of Cinderella, the ugly stepsisters actually cut off their toes in order to fit into the tiny shoe. Talk about painful. But we are just as guilty when it comes to those guys that will say mean things and put us through hell. We get rid of parts of ourselves, we change for them, we convince ourselves that if we grow our hair longer or if we wear better clothes then they will finally want us. They will finally love us. Sad story, too often the story line of many people in our lives, including our selves. Sometimes we just need to accept that we should not have to change in order to make a shoe fit, and we should not allow a shoe to hurt us. At the end of the night, it really isn’t all that fun trying to make the trek back to the apartment but being barely unable to move.

The shoes we grow out of

When we love something its simple. We love it. In terms of a person, we want to spend all of our time with them, we want them to know we care, we want them to know that our heart is reserved for them. There is nothing wrong with this. This is the heels that are actually comfortable, the great boots that we love to slip into after work, those flats that go with just about everything.

But shoes get tattered. They get torn. The soles wear out. Our feet grow.

I don’t think this is something that we really ever want to admit to ourselves, that we have moved on, especially when that pair of shoes have been so reliable in the past. We fall in love with people, we think that they are our everything. We are content and it feels amazing. But in a lot of cases we reach a point where we know that we need to move on, that there is more out there in the world and heart is just not ready to settle down.

Accepting this, well its never easy. We can meet someone that will show us the person that we want to be, will push us out of our comfort zone to do great and amazing things, but after a while we need to let go. We need to realize that some people are not meant to stay in our lives forever, they are meant to serve us for a small amount of time, fill the crevices and cracks in our hearts, and then move forward. It would be amazing if we could stay with them for a lifetime, but life is crazy like that. We end up wanting new shoes, ones that fit the person we have grown to be, ones that fit the person we want to become.

But this is not meant to discourage any one. Cinderella did fit into that glass slipper and she did live happily ever after. We all have a pair of soles of out there that are simply perfect for us. I think we just need to learn to never settle for the shoes that don’t fit, the shoes that hurt us too bad to even walk in them, and the shoes that we know need to be put back in the closet because they no longer fit. We all have that real fit out there. And I am sure if someone told the stories of the step sisters, what happened after Cinderella rode off into the sunset, I think we would find that they eventually found love too. They eventually found the shoes that fit their feet.