You cannot turn a frog into a prince. Or vice versa.

Once upon a time a girl met a boy. The girl was ripped and torn in certain ways, mostly because she was stubborn and at the same time on her own. She was angry because of that and had something to prove. So the boy was perfect. He was slight and green and barely spoke. She dressed him in clothes and carried him with her everywhere she went. He is a prince, she told her family. A real prince, she told her friends. Royalty, she told her ex. She was no longer ripped and torn. She was, instead, a princess.

The boy ate flies. And oozed slime. And always, always sought out dark, wet places to hide. In real terms this looked like his strange fights with male roommates that seemed more like lovers quarrels than common disagreements. This looked like odd sexual practices that he found so normal that he failed to even hide them. Rampant drunkeness at the tender age of 17, that turned into actual alcoholism by 34 and cocaine use by 44. An overt obsessions with pornography that intensified after the birth of his child. Or let’s start here – the complete disregard and disconnect from the conception and later killing of his first child. As he told the princess in their one and only conversation about it some 28 years later, ‘I’m sorry that was hard for you but we all grieve differently.” It also looked like accusations by his daughter that he touched her in ways that made her feel uncomfortable, that she’d seen the porn he created, and that he’d let people take pictures of her when she was bathing.

The fake princess ignored, pretended and continued along her mission to be saved. He was “her husband” and had “saved her” and “was too immature and dim witted” to be evil himself. In the princess’ world it was force and aggression and unchecked masculinity and sexual prowess that was to be defeated. Those were the demons that she could identify and name. She had no language for nice demons. The ones that courted her feelings and made her smile. The ones that did not stop boys from touching her or her favorite girl cousin from experimenting with her sexually or even stop her from trying the same thing with other little girls. Nor the ones that made a way for her high school boyfriend to do the same.

The frog did what frogs do. And eventually the princess could take no more. She packed up his clothes, held fast to her story about him, but committed her self to finding someone new. Really, the frog had leapt out of reach and she was alone and unprepared to manage by herself. And as luck would have it she met a prince.

She did not like him at first sight. She found him to be plain and then hard to hold. He was nothing like the frog. She couldn’t dress him to make him appear to be how she wanted. She couldn’t convince him to do what she wanted him to do. But he spoke and had values and ideas. He was real. She was intrigued and repelled at the same time. It was fear that he could see through her veneer. See the rips and damage and reject her for it. She chose a radical path. She showed him some of her scars. And really, she didn’t choose this at all. She, like many before her, felt comfortable revealing parts of her self for the first time to someone who would listen. But she got more than she bargained for. He expected things of her, made demands, and wanted her to live her real life, not the fictional one she had created. He wanted her to admit that she had lived wrong (because she had).

So she fought him. Hard and bitterly. And still he would not be controlled. And he revealed himself to be aggressive and masculine with a strong sexual prowess. The very things she fought against. And as the frog continued his slide into the pool of slime, she focused on the prince. When he tried to intervene to protect her daughter she fought him for his ways and really, for his concern at all. He threatened to reveal the frog and threatened to reveal her, to kill the version of herself that was whole and good. She lamented with her family about how harsh he was, set herself up as a victim against his aggression, and went about the process of ‘saving’ her daughter from the very forces that had caused her pain. But that was not her daughters pain.

Her daughter’s pain was of a mother who didn’t protect her and a father who abused and neglected her. Not of a stepfather who disciplined her too harshly, which was stern and unyielding, the very things the princess hated.

This is no fairytale. And there is no happy ending. There never is. There is only truth and logic. And the truth is that I gave up everything to protect someone who never did and still doesn’t care a bit about me, someone who gave nice words and soft actions to hide his true dark nature. Ironically, that description fits the frog but it also fits me. I don’t know if I had a real prince. I never took the time to find out. I do know that I took my anger, my fear, and an inherited vengeance against men to blame my son’s father for the sins of my daughters’ father, my stepfather, and every other man who I felt wronged me. My ire was raw and unbound. I fought, physically, to exorcise my demons. But I failed at that. You cannot turn a prince into a frog, no matter what you do. So now I am left with the logical outcome of my success. The frog raised my daughter. I can say that. And it cut her out of my life. I didn’t protect her,. guide her, or even love her. I just got to call a frog a prince.

I have taken losses, unimaginable since I chose the frog. It started long ago and I keep hoping but losing. I can’t accept that I was wrong, can’t understand how my calculations were so off. But it’s a case of mistaken identity. And a royal(wish) line that blames easy targets to settle old scores. Bullshit. I was raised to believe a bunch of bullshit. Lies like all kids do this or punishment is the crime.

It’s time to get to work. To tell the truth. And stop looking for princes and frogs to save me. And get to the business of saving somebody else. The only person deserving of it. Her.