I’m a huge Taylor Swift fan, so I’ve heard Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve more times than I can count. But there’s one line I never quite understood the way I do now:

“Give me back my girlhood, it was mine first.”

I used to think it was just a beautiful lyric.

One of those lines that makes you pause because you can feel the weight of it, even before you can fully explain why.

I knew it was heartbreaking. I knew there was something incredibly heavy about those words. But I think there are some lyrics you understand with your mind before you understand them with your life.

And maybe this is one of them.

Because few years later, I hear it differently.

Now, I think it is one of the saddest things a woman can say.

Because girlhood is supposed to be yours before it belongs to anyone else.

Before the world teaches you how to look. Before you learn that your body can be looked at differently. Before you understand that being a girl comes with rules nobody ever sits you down and explains.

There is a little girl who exists before all of that.

She doesn’t know she is supposed to be pretty. She doesn’t know she is supposed to be desirable. She doesn’t know that one day she will stand in front of a mirror and wonder whether her body is too much or not enough.

She just runs.

She gets dirty.

She laughs too loudly.

She says exactly what she thinks.

She wants to be a hundred different things when she grows up. And nobody has convinced her yet that she has to choose between being loved and being herself.

Then, slowly, the world introduces itself to her.

Sometimes through harmless-looking comments about her body. Sometimes through the eyes of people who look at her in ways they shouldn’t. Sometimes through being followed home, being touched without permission, being harassed, assaulted, or molested. And sometimes, tragically, someone doesn’t just make her uncomfortable.

They snatch her girlhood from her.

And not every woman talks about it.

Some never tell anyone.

Some don’t even have the words for what happened to them. Some carry it quietly for years, wondering if they somehow caused it, wondering why they froze, wondering whether it was serious enough to call what it was. Some learn to live with something they should never have had to carry. And that is perhaps one of the cruelest things about growing up as a woman sometimes the world doesn’t just teach you to be careful. Sometimes it gives you a reason to be afraid. But even when nobody touches her, girlhood can still be taken away in smaller, quieter ways.

The first time someone tells her to cover herself.

The first time she is called too much.

The first time she learns that being pretty can invite attention she never asked for.

The first time she realizes she has to text someone, “I reached safely.” because that is what being a responsible woman means.

The first time she learns to hold her keys between her fingers while walking home if you know you know.

The first time she realizes that freedom comes with precautions.

The first time she understands that there are certain kinds of women the world finds easier to love.

And slowly, she begins shrinking herself.

She learns to lower her voice.

To cross her legs.

To be nice.

To forgive quickly.

To not be difficult.

To not ask for too much.

To be understanding.

To be strong.

We call it maturity when she stops asking for what she needs.We call it strength when she stops crying.We call it independence when she learns not to expect anyone to show up for her. We call her a “good woman” when she becomes convenient.

But what if she was never supposed to become convenient?

What if she was simply supposed to become herself?

I think about the girl I was before I understood any of this.

And I wonder how she would feel knowing that one day she would spend so much time questioning whether she was enough.

Would she recognize me?

Would she wonder why I stopped doing some of the things she loved because they weren’t practical anymore?

Why I became so conscious of being watched.

Why I started thinking twice before speaking.

Why I learned to measure myself through achievements, appearances, relationships, and approval.

Why I became so afraid of being misunderstood.

Maybe growing up isn’t always about becoming someone new.

Maybe sometimes it is about finding your way back to someone you abandoned along the way.

That little girl.

The one who didn’t need permission to take up space.

The one who didn’t apologize for existing.

The one who believed she could become anything without first wondering whether the world would allow her to.

She deserves more than nostalgia.

She deserves to be remembered.

And maybe we cannot give her back the years.

We cannot undo what was done to her. We cannot erase the moments that made her afraid.

But we can stop punishing her for who she was. We can stop calling her immature when she was simply unafraid. We can stop confusing softness with weakness. We can stop treating rest like something we have to earn. We can stop believing that becoming a woman means becoming harder.

Maybe the strongest thing a woman can do is not become everything the world asks her to be.

Maybe it is remembering who she was before the asking began.

And maybe that is why that lyric hurts differently now.

Give me back my girlhood.

Not because I want to be a child again.

But because there are parts of me that were mine before the world touched them.

Before expectations.

Before fear.

Before other people’s opinions.

Before I learned how to make myself smaller.

Before I learned how to be someone’s daughter, someone’s partner, someone’s friend, someone’s employee, someone’s idea of a woman.

I was just me.

And maybe I owe her a life where she gets to be herself again. A life where she doesn’t have to apologize for taking up space. A life where her softness is protected, not exploited. A life where she knows that what happened to her was never her fault. A life where she gets to grow into a woman without having to lose the girl who came first.

Because before she belonged to the world, before she belonged to expectations, before she belonged to anyone else

she was mine first.

You knew me before I had someone to come home to before there was a person I could call after a long day. Before my weekends started having a little more meaning. Before there was someone whose plans naturally became a part of mine.

You knew me when it was just me.

And maybe that’s why some friendships feel different now.

Because falling in love doesn’t only bring someone new into your life. It changes the way your life moves around you.

I spend more time with him now. Of course I do.

He is my person🤍

The one I want to tell things to first. The one I want beside me when something good happens. The one I want to see after a terrible day.

Sometimes, I simply want to spend an entire Sunday doing absolutely nothing with him.

And none of that means I love my friends any less.

But somehow, sometimes, it feels like I’m expected to prove that.

You’ve changed.

You don’t meet us anymore.

You’re always with him.

Maybe I have changed.

But isn’t that what people do?

We change when we fall in love. We change when we lose someone. We change when we grow up. We change when life gives us something we have wanted for a very long time.

And I think there is something particularly unfair about expecting someone to remain exactly the same just because you loved the version of them that existed before.

I waited for this kind of love.

I waited to know what it felt like to have someone who feels like home. So now that I finally have it, I don’t want to feel guilty for being happy.

I don’t want my happiness to become the reason someone thinks I’ve abandoned them.

Because I haven’t.

My friends are still my friends.

I still want their calls, their stories, their birthdays, their stupid jokes, their late-night conversations and their “you won’t believe what happened” messages.

But I also have someone now.

And maybe the people who truly love us learn to make room for that.

They don’t make us choose between the people we love. They understand that sometimes friendship means giving someone space to build a life of their own and knowing that when they come back, the love is still there.

You knew me before I had someone to come home to.

And now, somehow, I have someone who makes coming home feel different.

Someone I can be completely myself with, even on the days I don’t know who I am.

Someone who has made ordinary days feel like something I want to remember.

Maybe I did change because I’m in love.

And maybe, for the first time, I don’t want to change back.

I came across a sentence the other day.

“You’re the youngest at every table you sit at.”

I’d actually known this sentence for a while.

But some words don’t make sense when you first read them. They wait. They sit quietly somewhere inside you until life gives them meaning.

I don’t think I truly understood it until I lived it.

And once I did, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Maybe because we’re always looking ahead. Wondering if we’re too late. Wondering why everyone else seems to be getting there before us. As if life handed everyone the same map and we somehow took a wrong turn.

But then I thought

How can I be late in a life that has never been lived before?

No one has ever lived my exact life. No one has walked through these exact moments with my heart, my fears, my dreams. So who am I racing?

Maybe that’s the tragedy of comparison. It makes us grieve for a timeline that never belonged to us.

The beautiful thing about that sentence isn’t that you’re young.

It’s that every table you sit at is a table your younger self once dreamed of reaching.

The first day at work.
The interview you were terrified of.
The café where you’re figuring yourself out.
The family dinner where you finally speak up.
The quiet evenings where nothing extraordinary happens, yet somehow, life is quietly becoming itself.

One day, you’ll look back at this version of you and smile. Not because you had everything figured out. But because you had so much life waiting for you.

You’ll realize that the person who thought they were running out of time was actually standing at the beginning of so many beautiful things.

Maybe we’re not meant to rush through life. Maybe we’re meant to notice it.

To notice the people who pull up a chair for us.
The conversations that change us.
The tables we earn a seat at.
The ones we outgrow.
And the ones we’ll someday leave, only to miss them later.

So if today feels slow, if it feels like everyone else is moving faster, remember this

You are not behind.

You are simply the youngest you’ll ever be at this table.

And that, to me, sounds a lot more like a beginning than an ending.

I never thought I would call a relationship boring and mean it as praise.

For the longest time, I thought love was supposed to consume you. I thought it was supposed to keep you awake at night.

Make your heart race. Make you question everything. I thought love was the butterflies, the uncertainty, the waiting, the wondering.

The constant urge to check your phone one more time. Maybe because that’s the version of love we’re sold.

The movies.

The books.

The stories where two people spend hours misunderstanding each other before finally confessing their feelings in the rain.

It all looks very romantic. Until you’re the one living it. Then suddenly, it isn’t romance anymore. It’s exhaustion. And maybe that’s why healthy love feels boring at first.

Because nobody talks about how quiet it is.

Nobody talks about how unremarkable it can look from the outside. No dramatic fights. No emotional rollercoasters. No wondering whether they’re going to leave. No analyzing a text message with your best friend like you’re solving a murder case.

Just…

Love.

The kind that shows up. The kind that calls when it says it will. The kind that remembers how you take your coffee. The kind that asks if you’ve eaten. The kind that doesn’t disappear when things get difficult. It’s not exciting in the way chaos is exciting. But that’s exactly the point. Healthy love doesn’t keep you on your toes. It lets you put your feet on the ground.

And if you’ve spent years believing that anxiety is what love feels like, that kind of stability can feel unfamiliar.

Almost suspicious.

You find yourself waiting for something to go wrong. Waiting for the plot twist.Waiting for the moment they stop choosing you.

And when it doesn’t come, you realize something. The healthiest love you’ve ever experienced isn’t boring.

It’s peaceful.

You’re just not used to peace.

I think that’s what nobody tells you. Love isn’t supposed to feel like a test. You’re not supposed to spend every day trying to earn reassurance. You’re not supposed to feel relieved every time they do the bare minimum. You’re not supposed to confuse inconsistency with passion.

Real love doesn’t make you chase it. It meets you halfway. And then it keeps meeting you there.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Maybe healthy love is boring. Maybe it’s the same good morning texts.The same voice at the end of a long day. The same person showing up, even when life gets messy. Maybe it’s predictable. Maybe it’s ordinary. Maybe it’s wonderfully uneventful.

But after all the stories that taught us love should feel like a storm, there is something beautiful about finding a love that feels like coming home. and one day you realize that

peace was never boring.

You were just used to chaos

There is a kind of tiredness that doesn’t come from speaking too much, but from preparing to be understood before you even speak.

Every thought gets translated before it slips out. Altered for tone. Adjusted for reaction. Edited for how it might land.

And nobody will notice that .

People think you are just saying things. They don’t see how much of it was already rewritten inside your head.

Over time, this becomes the habit. You stop noticing the internal work because it happens too fast to interrupt. You are not just expressing you are constantly converting your thoughts into something acceptable, something readable.

And that is where the exhaustion sits.

Not in communication, but in the constant pre-communication.

Even simple things get filtered. Not because they are complicated, but because you are already thinking about how they will be accepted while they are still forming.

So what comes out is never wrong. But it is never fully what you meant either.

Just a version that went through a quarrel.

And the strange part is, most people assume this is normal. That everyone does it. But not everyone lives with that gap between thought and expression.

Some people say things as they are still forming. Some people don’t translate they just speak.

And once you notice that difference, you can’t really unsee it.

Because then you realize the exhaustion was never about talking too much.

It was about never letting your thoughts arrive unfiltered.