I Think I Would Have Liked Her

I think I would have liked her.
The girl I might have been.

The one who didn’t flinch at raised voices,
who never learned to make herself smaller,
who grew up knowing softness
instead of learning how to survive sharp edges.

She wouldn’t have known the weight of silence,
the way it stretches between walls like a living thing,
the way absence can feel louder than presence
when the ones who should love you
have already left in every way that matters.

She would have been raised in warmth,
in encouragement,
in hands that lifted instead of struck,
in words that built her up instead of tearing her down.
She would have walked through her childhood
with light in her hands instead of fear in her bones.

And I think I would have liked her.

She would have been fearless.
She would have known the sound of her own voice
before the world taught her to swallow it.
She would have stood taller,
without the weight of shame pressing her shoulders down,
without the whisper of unworthiness curling around her ribs.

I think she would have started sooner.
The writing, the dreaming,
the reaching for something more.
She wouldn’t have waited until the world
made her fight for every inch of space,
until fear had woven itself so tightly into her skin
that peeling it away felt like tearing herself apart.

She wouldn’t have spent years
waiting for permission to take up space.
She would have walked into rooms
and belonged there.
Not as a question,
not as a burden,
but as something powerful,
something worthy.

I think she would have been powerful.

Not in the way the world told her to be—
not in the careful, decorative way they allow women to exist—
but in the way that cannot be denied.
In the way that does not ask for approval.
She would have known that beauty
was never the price of admission,
that she did not have to trade herself for value.

She would have grown up watching love
in a home that didn’t splinter under the weight of resentment.
She would have seen tenderness between two people,
watched hands reach for each other
instead of turning away.
She would have known stability,
would have known what it meant
to be safe in the presence of those who should love you.

She wouldn’t have run.
Wouldn’t have carried a suitcase packed with goodbyes,
wouldn’t have learned how to leave before she was left.
She would have had a place to go on Christmas morning,
a home that stayed hers
no matter how many years passed.
She would have had a mother who smiled more,
who wasn’t weighed down by the life she had to endure.
And maybe then, she wouldn’t have had to learn
how to parent herself.

I think I would have liked her.
And I wonder if she would have liked me.
This version of myself,
the one who still carries the weight of what was,
the one who still feels the echoes of absence,
the one who learned to build a life
from the ruins of what was left.

Because I am not her.
And I will never be her.
But I am here.

I have run,
but I have also built.
I have left,
but I have also created.
I have known what it is
to be unwanted—
but I have also made sure
that love is something
my own home will never lack.

Their failure is not my inheritance.

I have made something different.
I have made something whole.
I have made something that no longer
has to wonder what it would have been like
to be safe.

And I think—
even if she wouldn’t understand the fight,
even if she never had to claw her way toward believing in herself—
she would have liked me, too.

Because in the end, I did what she never had to.
I became.

And becoming is its own kind of victory.