I just finished “The Princess Diarist” by Carrie Fisher.
I am obsessed with Carrie Fisher.
I love her writing. I love her tortured soul. I love her sense of humor. I love her honesty and self-deprecation. I love her self-awareness to know that her fans were obsessed with her "Princess Leia" alter-ego and not actually her.
I love the heart-wrenching honesty in which she writes about her complicated relationship with her mother in “Postcards From The Edge.” I love her transparency and wit about addiction in “Wishful Drinking.” I love her fearlessness in writing about her mental illness in “Shockaholic.”
I love when she equates signing autographs at Comic-Con to lap dances. I love that she never felt confident about her body or her sexuality until she learned that Princess Leia was the object of gratification for millions of young boys around the world.
I love that she talked about how she failed to appreciate her young face until it later “melted” as an older woman.
I love her unapologetic obsession with Coca-Cola and cigarettes. (If I weren’t such a control freak, those would be at the top of my list too.) I love her loyalty to her French Bulldog named Gary.
I liked Star Wars. I liked that Princess Leia was fun and refreshing as one of the early females heroines with “sass.”
But I was never obsessed with the movie franchise like millions of others. To me, Princess Leia is just a great character with a really unfortunate hair-do.
Carrie Fisher, on the other hand, was a complicated human being. Carrie Fisher was a world-class storyteller and a writer that truly speaks to me. Carrie Fisher was the one who inspired me to write. Carrie Fisher was the one I would wait in line to meet. Not Princess Leia.
Princess Leia has been memorialized in memorabilia and film and even in a wax museum. Carrie Fisher will live on through her books which bring me great joy and inspiration. But I am sad that I will never get to tell Carrie that it was “Carrie” who inspired me to write and find humor in the mundane and the absurd.
I miss YOU, Carrie Fisher. May your tortured and hilarious soul rest in peace.
