Cycle II · “The Hidden Life” · 02

She didn’t think about herself as “younger” back then.

Back then, she just… was.

School hallways that smelled like disinfectant and chips, the same faces in every class, a locker door that felt more like an enemy than a place to keep her books. That was the whole map. Everything important fit into:

A ride from home to school.
The glow of a screen late at night.
And whatever she was obsessed with that week.

The world outside felt like background stock footage — something adults argued about while she stressed over whether today’s outfit made her too invisible or too obvious.

She remembers how every song felt personal in a way that almost embarrassed her, even at the time. Put on the right track and suddenly:

Every lyric was a secret message.
Every chorus was a coded confession.
Every bridge was “literally my life.”.

She’d rewind the same part four, five, ten times, convinced the universe was trying to tell her something very specific about the person she was going to become.

Half the time, the person she thought she was going to become just changed with whatever song she had in her headphones that week.

She had flavors, even if she wouldn’t have called them that:

One that only came out online.
One that only existed when she dressed a certain way.
One that was brave enough to say “no”.
And one that apologized for it immediately after.

She thought those were all just “phases,” like apps you could uninstall when you were done. She didn’t know yet that some of them were going to leave dents in the way she moved forever.

Crushes back then felt like all-or-nothing events:

Either they noticed her.
Or the world ended for a week.

There wasn’t room in her imagination for:

Slow fading.
Soft drifting.
Staying in touch for years without being able to name what they were to each other.

She thought if someone mattered, they’d be in every chapter — not just one or two that echoed quietly through the rest.

She didn’t have a “body story” yet, not really.

She knew what she didn’t like in the mirror. She knew which angles were safe enough for photos and which ones made her want to delete everything. But she hadn’t knotted her entire worth to how she looked in other people’s cameras.

Most of the time, her body was just:

Something to get her from class to class.
Something that hurt once a month.
Something that sat cross-legged on the floor with a controller in hand.

The part of her that would later be called submissive was already there, but it didn’t know its own name. It showed up as things like:

Doing extra credit so the teacher would be proud.
Staying late to help clean up because “someone has to,”.
Saying “it’s fine” when it wasn’t, just to keep the peace.

She thought that made her “nice,” not someone quietly training herself to disappear when things got tense.

When she reads the post now, older, sprawled out on her bed with her phone too close to her face but just far enough away to leave a mark if she drops it again, she feels this odd double-vision:

The person who was absolutely certain she’d never get lost.
And the one who’s here now, counting all the ways she did.

The line that catches is the one about “traps shaped like my own thoughts.”

She thinks about how many times she decided:

If I’m just easygoing enough, they’ll stay..
If I’m just low-maintenance enough, they won’t leave..
If I don’t need too much, I’ll be safe..

She didn’t need anyone to hand her those rules. She built them herself, out of a hundred small moments where being quiet seemed like the fastest way to not be alone.

Now, she’s old enough to know better.

Except “better” isn’t a single thing you arrive at.

Sometimes “better” is just:

Noticing that the old reflex is kicking in. catching herself before she shrinks. letting the version of her that wants things stay in the room a few seconds longer than before.

She scrolls back to the last lines of the post and reads them again, slowly this time, thumb hovering over the screen:

“I didn’t realize I wouldn’t ‘find’ myself out there somewhere — I’d have to choose who I was going to be, and keep answering to that choice when nobody was talking at…

me.”

She thinks about all the versions of herself that were never exactly lies, just incomplete:

The one who thought passing classes was the whole mission. the one who thought “being nice” was safety. the one who thought wanting too much made her ungrateful. the one who decided it was easier to be whatever people needed than risk being too particular.

None of them were wrong, exactly.

They just weren’t the whole.

She doesn’t know yet what the final flavor will be — if there even is such a thing. But she does know this much, sitting there with the blue light on her cheeks and the past lingering under her skin:

The next version of her won’t be an accident.

If she’s going to belong to anyone again — to a person, to a life, to anything bigger than herself — it’s going to be as someone she chose on purpose, not someone she backed into because she couldn’t imagine anything else.

She locks her phone, and for once, instead of wishing she could go back and fix who she used to be, she lets herself feel a small, sharp pride for the fact that she made it here at all.

Cycle II · “The Hidden Life” · 02

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