When I was a child, I chose pink as my favorite color and never looked back.
And now, twenty years later, no one questions it. They just accept it. I accept it too, without thinking. But sometimes I wonder how often we move through life on autopilot.
Sometimes the kindest thing you can do for yourself is to pause. To soften. To sit with yourself long enough to ask the questions you’ve been avoiding.
Ask yourself why you feel the need to overexplain.
Ask yourself what brings you joy.
Tenderly, let yourself hear the answers.
And do not worry if you change a little each day. I worry about myself more often than I admit. Sometimes I think I’m too timid, too mousy, too afraid of being misread.
Then comes the guilt. The feeling that sweating over your small crisis is immature.
But some messes just show that a room is lived in, not neglected.
You don’t have to be mysterious. You don’t have to speak in riddles. You are allowed to share what feels right and keep what feels tender. You are free to have your own boundaries.
When I was in college, I tried so hard to balance who I was and who I wanted to be. Not in some dramatic identity crisis. It was questioning what I could and couldn’t share. When I felt ashamed, I constantly challenged the validity of my emotions.
Eventually, I learned that self-interrogation doesn’t lead to clarity. It just builds noise. And once you stop performing the character you’ve been playing for years, there’s this strange, open silence. It’s like stepping into an empty room and hearing your own breathing for the first time.
I think that’s the weirdest part of growing up: understanding there is no singular real you ready to be uncovered. No grand prize after years of quietly curating the perfect you. There is just the you who exists in the now, the you who is still being formed.
The real you shows up in the thoughtful choices you make when no one is watching. In the things you gravitate toward without thinking. In the hobbies you keep coming back to, even when you convince yourself it is silly. In the way you exhale around the people who make you feel seen.
You are not a performance. You are not an aesthetic. You are more than the pink-loving child or the adult who keeps answering out of habit.
And here is the truth: you do not need to find “her.” You already are her. She is the person you have been quietly growing into.
Hey Kaleigh! 