For me, performing looked like earning community love just to stay part of the flock. It meant pretending I didn’t see what I saw, didn’t experience what I experienced, didn’t feel what I felt.

The version of me who holds both the deepest ache and the wildest magic? She’s twelve. That was the age I felt the most abandoned, not just by people, but by possibility. By safety. By joy. And yet, that was also the age I dreamed the loudest. Dreams so vivid I can still taste them if I stop long enough to listen. So I started honoring her, not just in therapy or writing, but in how I live. In the way I cut my hair. The music I dance to barefoot in the kitchen. The snacks I m

A story about the quiet ways we’re edited by others—through clothes, food, and shame—and the moment I realized I could reclaim autonomy and stop asking for permission to exist.