Privacy at Home.

When I was in high school, a few private things got “discovered” that had absolutely no business being in anybody else’s hands. A vibrator. Some filthy texts. Standard teen behavior, suddenly treated like a top-secret scandal because people love drama, especially when it isn’t theirs.

My life has always had this flair for unnecessary theatrics. It was never, “Hey, can we talk about this?” No. It was always an accusation delivered with the confidence of someone who’d already built a full case file, solved it, and sentenced me before I even opened my mouth. And once the tone went accusatory, my brain panicked- not because I’d done anything wrong, but because panic turns every honest sentence into the world’s worst alibi.

People had been predicting my downfall for years. I was always the one expected to go off the rails- tattoos, dyed hair, drugs, pregnant by lunch, take your pick. But reality turned out much more boring: a couple tiny tattoos I forget about, bright hair purely for fun, responsibility levels that would disappoint every person who bet against me. Yet somehow the predictions stuck around louder than the actual truth ever did.

No one wanted facts; they wanted a storyline. One misplaced detail and suddenly I was starring in some version of myself I’d never even met. A vibrator, a few texts, diary entries- all of it became its own chapter in a book I wasn’t writing.

Now that I look back, it’s actually hilarious. All that secrecy, all that shame over being a regular human teenager with a sex drive. If they asked me today when I lost my virginity, I’d straight-up tell them. Honestly? They’d probably be shocked I wasn’t sluttier.

But the way I spiraled, the way they spiraled even harder, the way the whole thing felt like the end of the damn world when really, it was just… a Thursday.