She was never right. About anything. She was the wrong size. She was too loud. She was too needy. She was too talkative. She was too naive. She was too silly. She was too weak. She was too smart. She wasn’t smart enough. She was selfish. She was careless. She was obnoxious. She took up too much space. She was all the things she wasn’t supposed to be and, no matter how hard she tried, she remained none of the things she was told she should be. And so she carried around the bottle labeled “Drink Me” and drank she did until she shrank and to the right dimension to squeeze through doors that led to someone else’s ideas and expectations of her. She never questioned if she should be trying to fit through those doors. She never thought about herself, what she wanted, what she deserved. She simply grew smaller and smaller until there was hardly anything left of her at all.

Then, after years of shriveling and sacrificing the best of herself to those who would never believe she was perfect as is, she had a revolutionary thought. There was more than one way to grow smaller. She could stop trying to be everything to everyone except herself. She could put down the “Drink Me” bottle and leave. And as she peeled out, she did become smaller to those who had wanted just that of her. She gazed into the sideview and read, “Objects in the mirror are larger than they appear.” She regarded her reflection there and recognized that with each mile she put between herself and those who didn’t appreciate her for who she was, she was growing larger.

For a split second as their figures grew smaller in the rearview, she thought she felt a pang of regret about leaving those people behind. Then she thought, “Nah,” and kept driving.

“I think I’ve been too good of a girl
Did all the extra credit, then got graded on a curve
I think it’s time to teach some lessons
I made you my world, have you heard?
I can reclaim the land”

~Taylor Swift