twenty one different women live inside of me…🌷🤍

[0:00]Twenty one different women live inside of me. Some happy, some fearful, some depressed, others grateful. I am a living mosaic of every age I've ever been. I'm one, still begging my mother to hold me, begging her to guard me from all the evils in this world. I'm two, afraid to stand on my own two feet, afraid of one wrong move. Into the ground I fall. I'm three, sticky fingers and bedtime stories, believing monsters live under my bed, but trusting that love could keep them away. I'm four, learning that the word no exists, that disappointment exists, that sometimes tears don't change the outcome. I'm five. Small hands wrapped around crayons, convinced I could create entire universes with enough colours. I'm six, realising the world is bigger than my living room. I'm seven, sensitive to everything, crying when someone raises their voice, understanding the moods of adults before I understand math. I'm eight, wanting to be older so badly it hurts, thinking freedom lives somewhere past my next birthday. I'm nine, starting to compare myself to other girls, wondering why I don't look like them, talk like them, move through the world like them. I'm ten, standing in front of the mirror, already learning how to be critical of a body that hasn't even finished growing. I'm 11, feeling things too deeply. I'm 12, feeling pressured to say yes to things I'm not comfortable with. I'm 13, gagging on my first sip of alcohol. I'm 14, trying to change my personality to fit the type of person everybody wants me to be and not the person I actually am. I'm 15, naive and believing love comes unconditionally. I'm 16, learning to make jokes out of my own pain so no one is burdened by my sadness. I'm 17, sitting on the bathroom floor, begging God to take me out of this world just as fast as he put me in it. I'm 18, realising that some moons never disappear, no matter how many times you change the bandage. I'm 19, terrified that everyone else got a map to adulthood and I missed the day they handed them out. Watching people move forward while I feel stuck, wondering if I'm behind or if I'm just broken. I'm 20, waking up with a panic that I should be more by now, more successful, more certain, more put together. Feeling like I'm failing a race no one ever explained the rules to. And I'm also 21, not healed, not fearless, still needing my mom, and still making jokes to drown out my pain. I am every version of myself that tried to disappear but stayed. I'm the child who needed protection, the teenager who felt too much, the young woman who thought she was failing, standing in the same body that kept breathing anyway. I carry 21 girls inside of me, and none of them are wasted. Not the soft ones, not the sad ones, not the ones who almost gave up. They are the reason I am this alive today. Today, I'm 21, and I'm not made up of broken years. I am made up of every year that refused to break me.