The Girl Who Grew Up Too Fast

If you’ve been on social media lately, you’ve probably seen it. Millennials and Gen Z can’t stop talking about 2016. They joke and say that 2026 is the new 2016. But for one girl, it wasn’t just a trend. It was a bad memory.

She wasn’t sixteen in 2016. She was thirteen, wishing to be sixteen. And when she finally got there in 2019, it wasn’t glitter or Tumblr aesthetics. It was a crash course in pain.

This isn’t a story about a specific year. This is about a time in her life. A version of herself she tried to forget. Maybe this is a letter to her younger self. Or maybe it’s a form of letting go. Either way, it deserves to be told. Because somewhere out there, another girl is fighting the same war.

In 2016, she was thirteen. Awkward in middle school. Moody. She still played with dolls when her friends came over. She liked going to the movies and loved animals. She thought she might become a therapist one day. But deep down, she didn’t really like herself. And she couldn’t figure out why.

She didn’t feel connected to her family. Her friendships didn’t feel safe. The thoughts she had at thirteen weren’t thoughts a thirteen-year-old should carry. She confided in her mother and a medical professional. They told her to breathe more. That it would pass. So she waited.

At fourteen and fifteen, nothing passed. It got louder. Heavier. Angrier. She became mean. She was misunderstood. She wanted the world to understand her, but it never did.

Then sixteen came. And sixteen was the boiling point.

Most sixteen-year-olds think they know everything. But she had already lived too much. She came from poverty. Her family never had money. While her friends went to summer camps and prepped for prom, she watched her mother cry over bills.

She got her first job at sixteen. Nine fifty an hour. It felt like gold. One day, she went to the mall with her friends. Bought herself a necklace from Pandora. A silver wishbone. It cost a hundred dollars even. It was her first real luxury. She felt proud.

Later that night, her mother stormed into her room, crying. The lights were about to be shut off. She needed money. The wishbone necklace went back. The hundred dollars went to the electric company. That was the first time she paid her parents’ bills. It wouldn’t be the last.

At sixteen, she was providing for a household that rarely made her feel loved.

She was tired of not being seen. So she ran.

When love doesn’t exist at home, girls look for it elsewhere. And she did. In the arms of boys. Boys a few years older. Boys who said she was beautiful. Boys who made her feel wanted for a moment. But that opened a new wound.

Now her abandonment issues, her mom and dad wounds, her insecurities—all of it came pouring out.

There was one boy she really cared about. Let’s call him Dustin.

Dustin would pick her up in his KIA. They’d go to his place. Hook up. Watch movies. Eat food. Then he’d drive her home. It wasn’t romantic, but it felt safe. It felt like something. Until it wasn’t.

One day, Dustin messaged her on Snapchat and said he didn’t feel the same. She was sixteen. That message broke her.

She lay on the floor and cried for hours. She didn’t eat for three days. She worked. She slept. That was it.

Because when you're sixteen, you believe the person you give your body to will stay.

He didn’t.

So she filled the void with other boys. New bodies to numb the absence. But it wasn’t enough. She needed something stronger.

She asked around. Found out how to get alcohol. Weed. Whatever could make her feel nothing.

She started drinking. Started smoking. She kept going until she couldn’t feel a thing.

Then came someone new. Someone worse. An older man.

She was sixteen. Almost seventeen. He told her he was thirty. But he was forty.

She saw him often. Snuck out every night. No one knew. No one cared enough to look. Maybe if someone had paid attention to the marks on her arms, they would’ve asked questions. But no one did.

She dated him through 2020. When she turned seventeen and a few months passed, she finally let him go. But now she was alone. No friends. No boyfriend. Just herself.

She stayed in her house for nearly a year. Then she came back out.

And the first thing she did was drink again.

At nineteen, something shifted. She got herself a therapist. Enrolled in college. She started healing. It was slow. But she did it.

She stopped drinking. She stopped hurting herself just to feel something. And eventually, she met her future husband.

She gave life a second chance, even when it still hurt.

Every day, the trauma tries to follow her. But she is braver now. Stronger. She loves harder. She is not perfect. But she is here.

That girl is me.

The girl who was thirteen. The girl who was sixteen. The girl who was seventeen. They all needed someone to see them, to protect them, to love them.

Now I am that someone.

To the versions of me who never felt safe—thank you for surviving.

From here on out, we are building a life worth living.

And we are never looking back.