Becoming the Girl Who Didnt Care

I learned early how to perform my way out of danger.

Teenage me tried to transmute the shame by becoming the slut who didn't care.

As a rebellion.

It was precise and ruthless emotional math.

If shame was coming anyway, I would get there first.

I would own it so completely that no one could use it against me.

The church told me sexual desire was the root of all evil and also that I should be fruitful and procreate.

I was inherently good. I was still a child.

I had done nothing to provoke what happened to me.

And yet the moment my body became something that had been taken from, I became the slut.

That was the story handed to me. So I took it and wore it on my own terms. Loudly. Completely.

That identity brought attention. It brought reaction.

A strange kind of power.

People admired the edges. They laughed. They watched. They projected.

And for a while that felt like freedom.

But eventually I hit a crux.

A fine line of being liked for my edges and being an outcast.

This is a tightrope I have been walking my whole fucking life. Damn.

So long as an adolescent I sang the song of shameless insistently, to the point of exhaustion.

Like a red badge of courage but for the wrong cause.

It was a victim's anthem of not taking accountability of my own actions.

And with time emotions like waves come crashing back.

I stopped singing because the shame crept in.

And I wore a poker face I subconsciously picked up from my culture.

The girl who did not care cared more than anyone knew. And she was exhausted.

All the years I was not met with the love I needed and pretended it didn't matter.

I'm sorry.

What I was actually protecting was far simpler than the performance suggested.

I wanted safety. I wanted softness.

I wanted someone to say you do not have to prove anything to be loved. Instead I became very good at being watched.

Visible but never truly seen.

The point of this work is to be able to look at all your imperfections and still love yourself every step of the way.

When I finally looked closely at that teenager I could see how intelligent she was.

How adaptive. How fiercely devoted to survival.

I stopped meeting her with correction and started meeting her with recognition.

I have overcome so much adversity, becoming soft through hardness.

Softness is not passivity. It is not silence.

It is emotional authority without armor.

The capacity to feel what is true without sharpening it into performance.

Softness is presence without posturing.

Choosing intimacy over reaction.

Choosing to be felt rather than merely noticed.

Those prayers nudged me into the softer, more open person I am today.

And I am proud of her.

The girl who learned how to be sharp did not disappear.

She relaxed. She no longer had to stand guard.

Her power was never in how hard she could be.

Aho.