The Girl I Used To HATE Is the One That Saved Me
Stop trying to heal from the version of yourself who kept you alive
As I’m writing this I’m sitting in therapy writing a letter to my nineteen-year-old self and I want to throw up.
Not because of what happened to her–because of how much I’ve hated her for surviving it the way she did. How loathsome I’ve been to that version of myself. How the first phrase I said to my therapist about her was, “She’s disgusting, and I never want to be her again.”
My stomach clenches like a fist every time I think about who I used to be. The version that traded her spirit for the emptiness of the world. The version that made herself smaller and smaller until she almost disappeared. The version that chose safety over truth so many times I forgot what my own voice sounded like. The version who didn’t believe she was worthy of trying to amount to anything.
I’ve spent years in therapy trying to excavate her from my system like a tumor. Like she was the problem instead of the solution I never learned to recognize.
One of my most popular poems, written after the aforementioned therapy sesh.
Here’s What I’m Finally Understanding
The girl who stayed quiet when her boundaries were crossed? She kept me alive in a house where speaking up meant emotional exile. The girl who learned to read every micro-expression, every shift in tone? She became my early warning system for danger I couldn’t name. The girl who coped in ways that nearly killed her? She was the one who decided to stop those actions, too. The one who got me to where I am today.
The girl who made herself small learned that taking up space was a luxury she couldn’t afford. She watched love get withdrawn like a hand pulled back from a hot stove every time she was too much, too loud, too real. So she became less. And less. Until she fit perfectly into the spaces other people carved for her.
My Nervous System Still Carries the Blueprint of Her Hypervigilance
The way my shoulders tense when someone’s energy shifts. The way my chest tightens when I have to ask for something I need. The way my throat closes around words that feel too big, too true, too much.
She’s still in there, that nineteen-year-old, scanning every room for exits, calculating the cost of being seen. And I’ve been trying to evict her like she’s squatting in a house that belongs to someone else.
But, what if she’s not the problem I need to solve? What if that version of you isn’t the problem that you need to solve?
What if she’s the part of us that learned to survive in a world that wasn’t safe for our full selves? What if her hypervigilance isn’t dysfunction, but intelligence? What if her people-pleasing wasn’t weakness, but strategy?
I’m Learning To Speak to This Version of Myself Differently Now
Instead of “You should have known better,” I’m practicing “You did the best you could with what you had.” Instead of “Why didn’t you just leave?” I’m saying “Thank you for keeping us safe when safe was all we could manage.”
This version of you doesn’t need to be fixed. She needs to be honored.
The version of myself I’ve been ashamed of isn’t my shadow—she’s my foundation. She learned to bend so I wouldn’t break. She learned to be quiet so I could survive long enough to find my voice. She learned to disappear so I could figure out who I was when no one was watching.
So, I’m Not Trying To Become Someone New Anymore
I’m trying to become someone integrated. Someone who can hold both the girl who learned to make herself small and the woman who’s learning to take up space. Both the version that stayed silent and the version that’s finding her voice.
They don’t have to fight each other. They can coexist.
The hypervigilance can become intuition. The people-pleasing can become discernment about who deserves my energy. The smallness can become the ability to find safety in spaces others can’t even see.
I’m not healing from her. I’m healing with her.
And maybe that’s what integration actually means. Not leaving parts of yourself behind, but bringing them all forward. Letting the girl who saved you be part of the woman you’re becoming.
She doesn’t need to disappear for you to grow. She just needs to know she’s safe now. That the hypervigilance can rest. That the smallness was temporary. That she did her job, and she did it well.
You can stop hating the version of yourself who got you here. She’s not your enemy.
She’s your origin story.
What’s crazy is it suddenly started raining… in my room… from my eyes. Wild.
Bri, that was a tough journey. Thank you for sharing. You are like a hermit crab outgrowing its shell. You will do this many times in your life. Keep growing :)