Good Girls Get Erased. Let's Not Play That Game.
Journal entries edited with my pal chat gpt
For generations, girls were taught to be small.
To dim their light, erase their wants, and center their worth around being chosen.
Marriage was the prize.
Obedience, the training.
And our ambitions—if they ever even sparked—were shamed into silence.
Some of us are just now realizing: that was never about love. It was about control.
Story:
During that time—when I got a job on my own terms, with no applause, no cheerleading—I thought I had done something incredible.
It was more than a job. It was a declaration.
A reclamation of self, value, dignity.
But to society that I grew in?
It didn’t matter.
Because I wasn’t married.
To them, that was the only achievement that counted.
Not the job. Not the healing. Not the bold decisions I made without their help.
Only marriage.
Because marriage meant I had been chosen.
And being chosen, in their eyes, was the only thing that could give me worth.
It didn’t matter if I liked the boy. Or if I had any desires of my own.
What mattered was what he wanted. What his family wanted.
That I show up as what they needed—a quiet, agreeable, “homely” bride.
A prop. A placeholder. An object that smiles and nods.
That’s what I was trained to become:
Insignificant. Inconsequential. Invisible.
The only value I was allowed to hold was as someone’s wife.
Even my independence was threatening. My college experience was “too much.”
Thinking highly of myself was dangerous.
And so they shamed me. Sidelined me.
Over and over again.
And then came Zia.
A girl who was cherished. Celebrated. Prioritized.
She was everything I was told I could not be.
And I couldn’t handle it.
Because how could it be allowed for someone else?
All my life, I had been trained to shrink. And here she was, taking up space.
Living. Being loud. Being free.
And it made me furious—not at her, but at the lie I had been fed.
The truth is: I had seen this before.
Women who refused to be small, who were hated for it. Criticized. Mocked.
Because we were taught that to want more is to betray the family, the tradition, the code.
We internalized that shame.
We didn't know how to take up space—so we made others wrong for doing it.
This pain… it’s not just mine.
It’s ancestral. It’s inherited.
By everyone in our lineage
Passed down in silence
No wonder we thought it was wrong
Lesson Learned:
We are the first of our kind.
First in our line to question, to defy, to want more.
That deserves gentleness.
So, when the shame creeps in—
For wanting more.
For taking up space.
Remember this:
You are not wrong for shrinking.
That was your survival.
But you are also not wrong for wanting more.
That is your awakening.
Take one step at a time.
Breathe.
Celebrate the rebellion in simply existing as you are.
You are not here to be chosen.
You are here to choose.