There was a time when I was absolutely convinced my life would turn out a certain way. Not because I had some perfectly mapped-out plan…but because I believed—without ever really saying it out loud—that if I just kept doing everything “right,” things would fall into place.
That’s what happens when you grow up as the good kid. The smart one. The well-behaved one. The one adults don’t have to worry about.
You learn pretty quickly that your value comes from being easy. From performing. From meeting expectations without making things harder for anyone else. And I got really good at that.
If you look at pictures of me as a kid, I look happy. And I was. But I didn’t know how much of myself I would eventually learn to ignore.
When I was little, I had big, innocent dreams. I wanted to be a ballerina. Then an astronaut.(Which is kind of funny now, considering I’ve never even been on a plane and have no intention of starting anytime soon.)
By middle school, my dreams had shifted into something that felt more realistic. I wanted to work with animals.bBeing a zoologist sounded like something I could actually become. It gave me something to hold onto. Something that made me feel like I had direction.
But if I’m being honest…even then, I wasn’t really choosing a life. I was choosing something that sounded right. Something that fit the version of me I thought I was supposed to be.
Because the truth is, I didn’t really know who I was. I knew how to succeed. I knew how to follow rules. I knew how to make people proud.
But I didn’t know how to ask myself what I actually wanted. And I definitely didn’t know how to deal with anything that didn’t fit neatly into that “good kid” identity.
When my parents got divorced, something in me shifted. I didn’t have the words for it at the time, I just knew that something that used to feel stable… didn’t anymore. The version of my family I had always known disappeared over night. The routines changed. The closeness changed. Even the way I saw myself started to change.
But I didn’t process any of that. I didn’t talk about it. I didn’t act out in a way that would have made people stop and ask questions. I just… absorbed it. Quietly.
If anything, I became more internal. More withdrawn. More careful.I kept my feelings to myself because I didn’t want to be a problem on top of everything else that already felt like too much.
So I adjusted. I adapted. I learned how to function while ignoring what was actually going on inside of me.
And that’s the part no one really talks about. How easy it is to look like you’re handling everything…while you’re slowly disconnecting from yourself.
From the outside, I was still doing everything right. Still getting good grades. Still staying out of trouble. Still moving forward the way I was supposed to.
But inside? I was starting to feel… off. Not in a way I could explain. Not in a way that would have made sense to anyone else. Just this quiet, constant feeling that something wasn’t right. Like I was going through the motions of a life that didn’t fully belong to me.
I told myself it was normal. Stress. Pressure. Part of growing up.
So I kept going. Because stopping wasn’t something I knew how to do.
Eventually, I moved on to high school, then I graduated with honors, and eventually I went to college.
And on paper, everything still looked like it was on track. This was the part where things were supposed to start coming together. Where all the years of doing the right thing would start to pay off.
But instead…everything started to feel heavier. The pressure. The expectations. The quiet feeling that I didn’t actually know what I was doing or who I was becoming.
And that’s when the cracks really started to show. Not in some dramatic, obvious way. It wasn’t like I woke up one day and everything was suddenly falling apart. It was slower than that. More subtle.
It showed up in the way I thought. In the way I coped. In the way I started making decisions that didn’t quite line up with the person I had always been.
At first, it didn’t seem like a big deal. Just small shifts. Small compromises. Things that felt manageable in the moment. But those small shifts started to add up. And somewhere along the way… I stopped feeling like myself entirely.
I went from being the girl who had it all together…to someone who felt completely lost. Disconnected. Numb in some ways, overwhelmed in others. Trying to hold everything together on the outside while quietly falling apart where no one could see it.
And the worst part was…I didn’t understand why. I didn’t connect it to my past. I didn’t see how much I had been holding in for years. How much I had been ignoring. How much of myself I had pushed aside just to keep functioning.I just thought I had messed up. Like I had taken everything I was supposed to be…and somehow ruined it.
There’s a specific kind of shame that comes with that. When you’re “the one who was supposed to do something with your life”…and suddenly, you’re not. It doesn’t feel like confusion. It feels like failure.
Looking back now, I can see how incomplete that understanding was. The life I thought I’d have wasn’t wrong. But it was built on a version of me that didn’t actually exist yet. A version of me who knew how to cope. Who knew how to process emotions. Who knew how to be honest about what was going on inside instead of just pushing through it. I hadn’t learned any of that.
I had learned how to survive. How to perform. How to meet expectations. But not how to understand myself. And eventually, that caught up with me.
Because no matter how long you ignore what’s going on beneath the surface…it doesn’t just disappear. It builds. And that’s the part I didn’t see at the time.
I thought my story started later…With the obvious things. With the choices that were easier to point to and say, “That’s where it went wrong.” But it didn’t.
It started here. In the quiet disconnection. In the things I didn’t process. In the identity I built around being “the good one” instead of being real. And when I look back now, I can see it clearly. It wasn’t one bad decision. It wasn’t one moment. It was a buildup. A series of experiences, emotions, and patterns that slowly came together into something I didn’t understand at the time…but now recognize as the beginning of everything that came next.
👉 In my next post, I’m going to talk about what I now see as “The Perfect Storm”—the combination of things that shaped the way I coped, the way I saw myself, and the path I didn’t even realize I was heading down.
Questions for the Journey
When you think about the life you thought you’d have… how does it compare to the life you’re living now?
At what point, if any, did things start to feel “off” for you?
Were there things in your past that you minimized or pushed aside because you didn’t know how to deal with them?
Do you feel like you were ever living as your true self… or as a version of yourself shaped by expectations?
What parts of yourself did you learn to hide, ignore, or disconnect from just to get through certain seasons of your life?
Have you ever mistaken survival for strength?
Closing Thought
I spent a long time thinking I ruined my life. That I had taken everything I was supposed to be… and thrown it away. But looking back now, I can see that what I really lost…was a version of myself that was never fully real to begin with. A version built on expectations. On survival. On being who I thought I needed to be instead of who I actually was. And as painful as it is to face that…I’m starting to realize something I didn’t understand before… Maybe I didn’t ruin my life. Maybe I just hadn’t figured myself out yet.
I don’t have all the answers. But for the first time, I’m beginning to believe that the life I’m meant to build…starts with finally understanding who I am.
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