What Anxiety Took From Me

In one of Taylor Swift's new songs, there's a line that really sticks with me. It's from the song Could've, Would've, Should've, and it goes like this: “Give me back my girlhood, it was mine first.”

When I first heard this line it hit me pretty hard, but as I thought more about it and saw people talking about it online, I realized that it resonates with me more than I thought.

As I’ve gone through my mental health journey and become more comfortable being my true self, I’ve been thinking a lot about the little girl who didn’t even know how to go about that. The girl who was made to feel like a burden for having big feelings. The girl who was only ever asked Why are you crying? and no further questions. The girl who saw the eye rolls and heard the long sighs. She noticed all of that.

By the time I was in middle school, I was a master at hiding my emotions, even though I didn’t realize it. I still cried, pretty often, but other than that I would simply smile and nod, remaining quiet and and accepting the compliments from adults that I was mature for my age. It’s interesting to think about why being quiet equaled being mature. Was I mature because I didn’t talk? Was I mature because those people never saw me breakdown? Like a child?

Grieving for yourself is very weird. I’m proud of how far I’ve come and I’m finally starting to be happy with my true personality. However, it still makes me sad to think about the kid I was who was essentially being told that there was something wrong with being her true self.

A few weeks back I was helping my mom with an event at our church, and when things started to go a little haywire, I was feeling stressed out. When I’m stressed, I tend to get passive aggressive. I made a comment about how I felt like I was going to explode (dramatic, I know), and someone who works in the church—who has known me for my entire life—told me to calm down, that everything was going to be fine. Things did work out alright, and a bit later she came up to me and complimented me on how well I “handled my anger.” She eventually told my mom that, too.

I was taken aback by that. The biggest problem with that is that I wasn’t actually angry, for starters. But I’m still thinking about that now because I realized that many of the people I grew up around have never seen me show emotion, besides crying. They don’t know what I sound like when I’m angry or stressed out. Isn’t that wild?

Do I blame anyone for this? I go back and forth. On one hand, a bunch of teachers should have been able to look at my behavior and recognize that it wasn’t typical for a kid my age. On the other, hindsight is 20/20, and while I think my symptoms and signs were obvious, maybe there was an argument to be made about a different cause for my behavior. Maybe I’ll never know.

Would I go back and redo that part of my life if I could? I honestly don’t know. Sometimes I wish I could. Sometimes I wish I could go back and shake every adult in my life and point out the exact ways I was struggling. Sometimes, though, I think about how things have ended up for me. Now, I’m not saying that it’s good that I went through all of that, not at all, but I am saying that starting my mental health journey when I did opened a lot of doors for me and helped me find my passion to spread awareness.

It’s hard to justify that argument, though. Sometimes I just want to listen to Taylor Swift and scream the words.

Give me back my girlhood, it was mine first.

—Abbie