I’ve struggled to write on the topic of “good girl mentality” more than any other. I’ve wanted to write about it for months now: how toxic and pervasive it was for me, how in a lot of ways it was forced on me, and how it was prevalent in so many facets of my life for so long. And the inability to write about it threw me into an absolute writer’s block. Hence the dearth of posts on here.

I want to write on it (still do), and yet, to say I’ve struggled to do so is a massive understatement. Do I write it like I did for “women in public” in an essay format with personal stories woven in or write it creatively like I did in “voice,” or some other format? What do I include? Everything feels wrong when I write about it. Ironically, nothing I write about “good girl” mentality feels good enough.

I have no shortage of what I want to say on this topic. The emotions and thoughts abound, but when I try to string words together on the topic, my voice withers, shrinks, and fades to nothing, into silence—a state I’m not anxious to return to, after having lived there for too long.

Should I start with the lighter moments: the time a guy literally patted me on the head and called me a good little girl but told me that he had the situation handled or go straight to the heart of it and discuss the moment I officially and irrevocably lost “good girl status” forever and was forced to confront the painful reconstruction process after one of the prevailing ethos of my life was utterly obliterated? How about all the times and ways it played out painfully and soul crushingly in forum after forum?

I spent a life time trying to achieve “good girl” status. Then, I made a series of decisions that forever barred me from achieving it.

Losing good girl status left me feeling utterly unmoored and adrift at sea. I had no pattern to follow, no model, and I floundered and almost drowned under the weight of that loss. If I couldn’t be the good girl and achieve that, then why try at all? What did anything matter if that was out of reach? What was my purpose? Who was I anyway if not a “good girl?” I didn’t just lose good girl status; for a time, I completely lost all sense of self. I lost me.

I struggled against that loss for a long time before finding a sense of self again, let alone my true self. I found myself emerging battered and gasping for air, having barely survived—and yes, ultimately, I was better off for the loss, no matter how inexplicably destructive that process and time of my life was. But it was not easy. It was a dark, toxic time that I would wish on nobody and hope never to repeat.

I didn’t intentionally choose to utterly destroy the “good girl mentality.” Only in destruction’s wake, did I even realize I’d ever had it or what it was. I was left frantically grappling for footholds, for some sense of self to hold onto and found none. And then I was left with what felt like nothing, no sense of self, no light, just a void.

Ultimately, I had to fight to create an entirely new framework, goals, and dreams and a whole new personality and persona from nothing but ashes. Then while in the midst of trying to create that identity and floundering spectacularly, I realized I actually had more excavating and destroying to do before building anything was even remotely possible. I also realized my first attempts at rebuilding a sense of self were equally toxic to what had just been demolished.

Maybe that’s why it’s such a hard topic for me to write about. Sure, it’s a flash and flicker of a million moments crossing the stage of my life, and the destruction of an identity and goal I strove to achieve for most of my life before it was obliterated. Yes, it means acknowledging that I’m now glad I never achieved the goal I set out to achieve for 23 some odd years of my life. I lost the “good girl” and found myself. But it’s also much more complex than all that.

Because to write about this is to expose all of me. ALL of me. To try to capture all of that on the page. Writing about this topic means writing honestly about the destruction of self, drowning under that loss of self, and then breaking free, kicking upward to the surface only to have to destroy more before rebuilding. It means writing with no walls or masks and no pretenses.

And maybe that’s why it’s hard to write about. Because that kind of vulnerability (something I shunned for 23 some odd years) isn’t something I’ve mastered yet. And writing about this topic without that level of honesty and commitment feels like a farce and disingenuous. Writing about this topic would also require a deep dive back into all those jumbled images and feelings and the darkest time of my life.

So for now, know that maybe one day I’ll write on this topic and also know that “good girl” status mentality nearly destroyed me (did temporarily). Maybe one day I’ll be able to put that all into words. But today is not that day.

Photo courtesy of Giorgio Trovato via Unsplash license