the girl who played oboe

growing up, glowing up, and remembering where the light first met you

“You look like you were one of the mean girls in high school.”

Funny, because I was the girl who played oboe in the high school band.

I had a botched boy haircut. I wrote Jonas Brothers fan fiction. I was chubby, awkward, and just trying to figure myself out.

I used to wonder how the pretty girls kept their eyebrows so perfect — still don’t know, but we roll with it.

I wasn’t popular. Just roots quietly growing underground. A seed planted in soil. Expanding. Waiting for my first bloom.

It took time to come into myself. The classic ugly duckling story. I wasn’t anywhere close to the girl I’ve become.

It makes me laugh now, the way people see me.

“You look like Tate McRae.”

“Like Kaley Cuoco.”

“A young Madonna.”

How did that first little bud turn into a rose everyone wants to hold? To add to their bouquet. Soft to the touch until they get close enough to realize there are thorns.

Maybe their perception changed.

Maybe I did.

Learning to trust myself. Learning to accept myself.

From someone afraid to exist in an external way
to the girl who laughs when her friend says,
“The boys think you’re flirting.”

They noticed? Oh no.

When I was younger, I used to panic at the idea of a boy finding out I liked him.
The anxiety, the fear of rejection, all consuming. Heart racing in the hallway. Stomach twisting and turning. Hiding behind a locker to go unseen. A habit that stuck with me even as an adult.

Then I went platinum blonde.
And I started noticing things differently,
how attention shifts, how people project ideas onto you.

I’m not afraid of the looks. The gossip. It doesn’t fuel me. It’s simply a reflection of those around me, not myself.

Because no matter how blonde your hair is,
how confident your walk becomes,
you’re still the girl who played oboe in the high school band.

And maybe that’s the secret, that we never really leave our beginnings behind.
They hum quietly beneath the surface, reminding us where we started,
how far we’ve bloomed, and how the roots still hold us steady
when the world looks at us and sees something entirely new.

That something new is not the mirror that holds the truth.

It is just an illusion. It only has power if we reflect it onto them.