Sometimes Your Knight In Shining Armor Is Just A Retard In Tin Foil

Granted I naively believed the name Sir Reynold Wrap meant he must be a noble man.
With a name like that how could he not be?


I remember questioning how someone who was so perfect could still be available?!
How had he flown under the radar of all the desperate-single-women-seeking-a-good-man?

I concluded it must be because no one else had been able to see his 'potential' quite the way I had.

They saw a foil dinner.
I saw a gourmet meal.


They saw reality.
I saw what I wanted and needed to see.


That, was someone who would make me feel special,
Maybe even make me BE special.
(At least that is what his words promised.)

Someone who would require some work,
But not anything that I myself could not help 'fix'.


I saw a distraction.
A good-looking one, which made it all that much easier.

Others saw red flags.
I saw my favorite color.

Shockingly (only to me), when it came time to face commitment in battle and the heat was on, 
All I found was charred remains of my foiled 'knight.'

I had wanted to blame him for not living up to what I knew he could have been.
For him showing up on his white, spay-painted, (in actuality) black-horse.
And for convincing me that the paint cans were not his.
That someone just happened to leave them at his house.
(At least that is what he said.)



But I kept coming back to the fact that I had formed the foil into a knight.
I had put my heart into it.
It had taken quite a bit of my time,
And a lot of my creativity and imagination.
Also countless trips to Denial to get all the information needed to construct him.




I had used the 'extra strong, heavy duty' type to fabricate my needs,
so recovery took even longer.


Have you ever tried to smooth out foil after it has been used?
You can never get all the wrinkles out and make it as shiny and new as it was in the beginning.
You can roll it back up and tell yourself lies, but you can never fully restore it to how it was  before you touched it,
No matter how hard you try....


What I did learn that was that I could try again.
That only I

could prevent future unnecessary torching of my heart and dreams that turned to ashes.
I could better use the facts I had previously ignored and improve my judgment.

I vowed in the future to use clear plastic wrap,

And to look for  Sir Calgon instead of Reynold if I ever wanted someone to 'take me away' again. 

"I have a history of making decisions very quickly about men. I have always fallen in love fast and without measuring risks. I have a tendency not only to see the best in everyone, but to assume that everyone is emotionally capable of reaching his highest potential. I have fallen in love more times than I care to count with the highest potential of a man, rather than with the man himself, and I have hung on to the relationship for a long time (sometimes far too long) waiting for the man to ascend to his own greatness. Many times in romance I have been a victim of my own optimism."
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)