The Girl in Me
I’ve begun writing again. Though if I’m honest, I never truly stopped. The words have always lived inside me—alive beneath the surface, dense with color, aching with memory. Even when I was a snaggletoothed girl in thick glasses and a home-perm gone wrong, long-limbed and fragile, towering over my peers like a sapling unsure of its place in the forest. I was writing then, too—my private opus, my unfinished love letter to the world—long before I understood what I longed to say.
Moving to Wheaton in grade school offered a chance to become someone new. A new town. A new skin. I arrived like a quiet moth, determined this time not to shine. I would not be the teacher’s pet, not the precocious “smart one.” I would no longer be the target of teasing or exclusion. I wanted only to dissolve into the background, just another kid tracing her name on the cover of a Trapper Keeper, practicing sameness like survival.
And for a while, it worked.
Until middle school, when the seams of my camouflage began to fray. Life in those years felt like a film reel unspooling—scenes stitched together with the buzz of classrooms, the slap of hurried feet on cracked sidewalks. I’d ride my bike to Northside Park and sit by the pond, sketching reflections—of water, of trees, of the quiet pause between thoughts. Sometimes I’d meet my brother at the tennis courts beside the bandshell, the two of us flushed with sun and laughter, our volleys more ritual than rivalry. I often ended up at the library, inhaling books, slipping back into my own skin just in time to beat my parents home.
Our summers were unscripted magic. Babysitters—sometimes young, sometimes old, always half-interested—left us to wander the edges of the world. Behind garages and beneath the shadows of forgotten carriage houses, my brother and I built entire universes out of dirt and daring. My friendships were few, but they were honest. And mostly, I preferred the company of characters—ones I conjured, ones whose scripts I memorized—black-and-white movie heroines and dog-eared protagonists who always knew just what to say.
I found sanctuaries for my wildness: art contests, writing competitions, music, theater. At home, there was joy. Music echoing from every corner. The scent of celebration folded into the very fabric of the carpet. Family swirled around in chaotic love—laughing, singing, arguing, forgiving. We camped in autumn and built blazing fires. We escaped to Florida once the thaw began. And in Indiana, barefoot in the grass, I listened to my grandparents offer the kind of wisdom you can only hear when the television is off and the air holds still.
It is easy to write only of the wounds. And yes, I’ve begun writing those. I’ve barely scratched the surface, truthfully. But before the ache, there was architecture. There was love. There was light. A foundation poured with care—built by people who believed in joy and made a ritual of gathering around it.
Would I still be here—writing this—if not for that first shelter of belonging? I wonder.
And now, I find myself inhabiting an older version of that same girl—regretfully snaggletoothed in both body and spirit, still a little uneasy inside this skin. Only now, it is not awkwardness that burdens me, but the erosion of time. A body shaped by living, by bearing, by breaking and healing. A body that has known collapse and resurrection. I wear it like a well-worn sweatshirt—tattered in places, mended in others, wholly mine.
I carry that girl with me still. The one who wandered through sunlit libraries, who filled notebooks with invented lives, who chose story over small talk. She never left. She’s still watching, wide-eyed and tender, holding the kind of hope only children possess. And finally, I am listening.
Yes, I am older. The mirror does not lie: it reflects a woman who has been through fire. But I am also softer in my judgments. Fiercer in my boundaries. Gentler with the parts of myself I once wished away. I have learned to keep moving, even when the road disappears. I’ve learned how to build meaning from the rubble. How to write my way back into the light.
So I write now—not only because I must, but because I can. Because that strange, tender girl in the too-big glasses would be proud. Because I owe her that. Because the strength to survive, to create, to remember—it was always there. Rooted deep in those early years of books and bike rides, of music and make-believe. That foundation didn’t vanish when the darkness came.
It stayed.
It holds me still.
And maybe the most miraculous thing of all is this:
She never gave up on me.
So now, I will not give up on her.
