The Princess Diarist(44)

Whoever that might’ve been before Leia eclipsed me, informed me, and made me angry and resent it when other people would try to put words in her mouth without consulting me! You mean I got to decide all things Leia only between sequels? When the camera goes on—I get handed a script to memorize?

What would I be if I weren’t Princess Leia? A great big nothing without one piece of fan mail to call my own? Someone who didn’t have to defend her right to not look good in a bikini over forty-five? With no bad hair to look back on wistfully? No nights spent thrashing around in bed sleeplessly wishing I hadn’t used that awful Dick Van Dyke British accent while conversing intensely with a man in a mask who would turn out to be my father even though he’d used some horrible bad dentist in a sphere, giving me a root canal without Novocain as a form of torture? If he knew he was my father, why would he do such a thing? Unless it was to show me how good my actual real-life father was! If so, what an amazing (though delivered in an arguably life-threatening manner) perspective to provide me with!

Unfortunately, this perspective was delivered too late in my life to do me any real actual good. It could’ve been done to challenge me—force me, if you will—to make it do me good! It was done because he trusted that I had sufficient strength to be able to apply this insight! God never gives us more than we can handle, so if He gives you a lot, take it as a compliment—you catch the overall gist of my drift.

? ? ?

what would I be if I weren’t Princess Leia? I would never give a celebrity lap dance or be considered a serious actress or have used the term “nerf herder” as though I understood it, though I didn’t at all, never have met Alec Guinness or been a hologram where I recited earnestly a speech I’ll remember all my life until I get dementia because I had to say it so many times, or shot a gun, or been shot, or not worn underwear because I was in space.

Never never never (I’m sobbing as I write this) have been way overexposed. Or have had adolescent male fans think about me up to four times a day in a private place, never have had to lose huge quantities of weight, never have seen my face millions of feet high long past the time when that’s a good idea, never have gotten a quarter of a point of the back end of the movie’s gross.

Never have had the Force or a twin or been friends with a huge moody howling . . . not a monkey but . . . maybe a hairy creature. Never have been asked if I thought I’d been objectified by silently wearing a gold bikini, while seated on a giant laughing cruel slug, while everyone chatted gaily around me? Never have been in an airport and heard someone shout, “Princess!” as though that were my actual name, enabling and requiring me to turn around and politely respond, “Yes?” Never have had my entire planet blown up in front of me (including my mother and entire record collection), while looking at a small blackboard with a circle on it, never have talked to robots or teeny bearlike creatures whom I would then feed snacks. Never have been asked, “Who do you think you would’ve turned out to be if you weren’t an intergalactic princess?”

I’d be me.

You know, Carrie.

Just me.