I know girls who are brilliant — genuinely, almost unfairly brilliant — who have engineered their entire existence around never being caught trying. Because trying means wanting. And wanting means people can see exactly where to aim when they decide you're too much, or not enough, or funny for thinking you could.

We learned this somewhere. I don't know exactly where but we all got the same lesson: visibility is risk. So we make ourselves useful instead of ambitious. Warm instead of hungry. Supportive characters in spaces where we could have been the whole story.

And the grief of it doesn't hit you like a wave. It accumulates. You notice it at 2am, or when someone younger is living the thing you talked yourself out of, and you feel proud of her and hollowed out at the same time.

I'm not writing this from the other side. I'm writing it from the middle, still negotiating with my own fear every single day. Just finally calling it what it is.