The Girl I Was

I remember her. Not perfectly… but enough to know she deserved better.

She didn’t have much. No quiet, peaceful room. No space that felt like hers. Most nights weren’t calm. They were loud… or tense… or just heavy. The kind of heavy you feel even when nobody’s saying anything.

She learned early how to stay quiet. How to read the room. How to tell when something was about to go wrong before it even happened. That’s the kind of stuff that sticks with you, even when you grow up.

Love didn’t look soft where she came from. It looked like yelling. Like people leaving. Like things being said that you can’t take back. And sometimes… it looked like nothing at all.

So when it came to relationships, she didn’t know what she was doing. She just knew she didn’t want to be alone.

She held onto people longer than she should have. Not because they deserved it, but because she thought if she just tried harder—loved better—stayed longer—something would finally work. It never did.

She got used to being confused. Used to wondering where she stood. Used to feeling like she had to earn something that should’ve been given freely. And still… she stayed.

That’s what she thought love was. Staying. No matter how bad it got. No matter how it made her feel.

I wish I could go back and talk to her. Tell her she doesn’t have to live like that. Tell her that love isn’t supposed to feel like survival. But she wouldn’t have listened. Not yet.

She had to learn the hard way. Over and over again.

And even now… I still see her sometimes. In the way I think too much. In the way I expect things to go wrong. In the way I hesitate before trusting anything that feels too good.

She didn’t disappear. She just grew up.

And even though she made mistakes… even though she stayed in places that hurt her—I can’t hate her. Because she didn’t know any better.

She was just trying to feel safe.