I’m not like other girls.

I’m not like other girls.

At least, that’s what I used to believe.

I thought being different would protect me.

That standing apart would make me untouchable, unforgettable, somehow more real.

But the truth is,

I am exactly like other girls.

Because I am built from the pieces of every person I have ever known, every person who has ever passed through my life and left a fingerprint behind.

I am a collage of borrowed things.

A patchwork of habits and hopes stitched together with invisible thread.

I keep my moisturiser in the fridge because someone once told me it keeps your skin cool and fresh, and even now, when I reach for it, I think of the way she smiled when she said it.

I don’t drink almond milk, because someone I loved once wrinkled their nose at the taste, and even though I could drink it now, nothing stops me from remembering.

I love to cook. Not because I was born knowing how, but because someone stood beside me once, patiently teaching me how to stir, to taste, to salt just a little more than you think you need. Because feeding people became a language for love before I even realised I was speaking it.

I am kind to strangers because someone once was kind to me when I didn’t deserve it. And I’m learning, over time, that softness is not weakness, and that giving grace to others is sometimes the only way to survive yourself.

I wear certain colors because someone once told me they made my eyes stand out. I hum songs under my breath that I picked up without noticing. I walk a little faster when I’m nervous, because I watched someone I loved do the same.

But not every inheritance is kind.

Not every piece fits easily.

I carry fears that were not mine to carry. I flinch at words that were never meant for me. I learned to shrink myself, to make myself smaller, because once, someone I loved taught me that being thinner meant being worth more.

There was a time I believed it. A time when hunger felt like discipline. When disappearing felt like a kind of victory.

And when the emptiness grew too loud, I learned other ways to hurt.

Quieter ways.

Ways no one would notice if they weren’t looking closely enough.

Some habits settle into your skin like scars you never asked for.

I carry that too.

The silent lessons.

The wounds dressed up as love.

The ghosts of things I never should have had to survive.

Some habits settle into your skin like scars you did not choose. Some ghosts stay even after the doors have been locked.

Still, I carry it all.

The good things.

The hard things.

The broken things.

I carry the way certain people taught me to be brave without ever saying the word. The way others taught me to be careful, how to hesitate, how to guard the most tender parts of myself.

I am not original.

I am not untouched.

I am not new.

I am stitched together from shared laughter, broken promises, silent forgiveness, half-finished conversations, and late-night drives that blurred into morning.

I am hands I have held. I am the memories of people I no longer talk to but still dream about. I am all the small, unseen moments that no one else remembers but that built me anyway.

And sometimes, when I think about it, it makes me wonder: how much of me have I left behind in others too?

I hope I left behind the good things.

The way I’m passionate.

The way I show up when it matters.

The way I’m gentle to cats on the street.

But I know I have left behind my sharp edges too.

My impatience.

My silences.

My anger.

We never get to choose which parts of us stay. Only that we hope the best parts echo louder than the worst.

I am like other girls.

Girls who stayed up too late believing in things they couldn’t name. Girls who loved so hard they forgot to leave anything for themselves. Girls who learned, over time, to wear hardness like armor, even though part of them still wishes softness could have been enough.

I am not made to stand apart. But I have not quite figured out how to belong either.

I am still learning.

Still trying to find a place where the rougher parts of me can soften, where the noise quiets, where I do not have to apologise for who I became to survive.

I want to believe I can weave myself into the lives of others, the way others wove themselves into me. Some days I can almost feel it like a thread tugging at the edge of something bigger than me.

Other days, it feels like I am only ever watching from the outside.

But everyday I stay, I hope, and I try.

I am the product of every borrowed jacket, every inside joke, every shared silence on the ride home. I am the sum of homemade meals, and bad advice I took anyway, and the way someone once braided my hair when I was too sad to speak.

I am not like other girls, because there is no girl who is just one thing.

We are all collages.

We are all mosaics of everyone who ever showed us love,

or hurt,

or kindness,

or goodbye.

I am like other girls.

And it is the greatest thing I have ever been.