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This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at FIU chapter.

When I was a kid, my favorite princess of all time was Snow White. I grew up believing that I was the fairest of them all, and every time I looked in my mirror, I knew this to be true. While I understood that I was a princess, I also knew that no princess is truly a princess without her prince. 

I met my prince at 16-years-old, and he was everything I could have ever dreamed of. He was charming, funny, and sweet. He reminded me a lot of the princes that I grew up watching on television and the time we spent together felt like a fairytale. I was so grateful to have finally met him and could not wait for the day that we would create our own kingdom together. I was so thankful for the way he made me feel and the closeness that I felt with him. It was like I had known him for years, maybe in other lifetimes too. But soon, I began to wish that I had not known him at all. 

My prince slowly began to turn into a frog. And, I know that sounds crazy, because how could a person suddenly turn into an amphibian? Isn’t that just in movies? Well, in this case it just so happens to be true. Moments of affection and care turned into snide remarks and fear. Time spent with me turned into time used to control and hurt me. Me saying the word “no” turned into outbursts. Me feeling loved turned into me being trapped. 

The fairytale that I once lived in turned into a true nightmare, and the cracks on my once magic mirror seemed to grow deeper every day. Thoughts of how beautiful my teeth were after braces turned into the need for whitening strips. Confidence in how intelligent I was turned into thoughts of how I was stupid and would never get into college. The pride I felt in my ability to write turned into the fear of picking up a pen, because nothing I could write would ever sound good. And though these things weren’t written in any of my textbooks, I knew them to be true. I mean, the one who loved me so much, my prince, told me so. 

I tried googling these things just to make sure, but nothing that was ever relevant came up. The only things I saw were things like “5 steps to loving yourself,” or “How to fix a broken mirror,” and “What is domestic violence?”At first, these things didn’t seem to matter to me. I mean, what is a princess without her prince? Right?? Right????? 

A princess without her prince is a woman who does not let someone else hate herself into loving them. She is kind to herself and knows the kind of treatment that she deserves. She knows that she can do anything that she sets her mind to. She knows she has a beautiful smile, she knows that she is incredibly intelligent, and she proudly writes about all of these kinds of things. She is someone who is able to look into her magic mirror and know that the things she has been told about herself are simply untrue. She not only believes in her own abilities but knows them to be correct, not because someone else told her so or otherwise. She knows that the remarks that she faces are not a reflection of her and that her Google searches are in fact relevant. 

She is me, and I took those steps into loving myself. I left my prince (or should I say my frog?), and began to know that I was and am worth way more than he made me think I was. I started to know that all of those thoughts I felt while looking into my mirror as a child were in fact true, and with this I understood the thoughts that were untrue. When I left my prince, I started to accept the fact that the things I faced were of abuse rather than fairytale and that the cracks left in my mirror were reflective of the cracks left in my heart. Through my healing journey, I have worked to patch these cracks and have purchased a new mirror too. 

When I look into it, I now see myself as the same kind of princess that I saw myself as as a child. However, there is one main difference; I know that I am still a princess, with or without my prince.

Megan Forro is a writer at the Her Campus at FIU chapter. She is extremely passionate about domestic violence awareness and all things self-love, which is reflected in her work on the site. Beyond Her Campus, Megan works as an orientation leader at her university and is involved in neuroscience research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Her great passion for domestic violence and mental health awareness has motivated her to shadow a clinical psychologist as well. Writing is something that she enjoys deeply, which is reminiscent in her published poem "Death is a Burning Curse" in "Poetry by Chance: An Anthology Powered by Metaphor Dice" and her memoir in "The Class of Covid-19". She is currently a junior at Florida International University and is majoring in Psychology. In her free time, Megan enjoys traveling to new places and scrapbooking her Italian study abroad adventures. When she is not on a plane, you can find her dancing to anything Tate Mcrae in her room or exploring Miami with her friends.