Some nights I sit with the silence and feel like I’m eavesdropping on my own past.

The 1990s were the best decade of my life, and I don’t say that with any polished nostalgia or rose-tinted yearning for mixtapes, AOL Chatrooms, and pagers. I say it because I was still half-feral then—caught somewhere between a teen girl and a woman, trying to grow into skin that didn’t quite fit but somehow still looked like mine. I didn’t have the language back then, for my body, my truth, my queerness, my rage—but I had instincts sharper than broken glass, and I followed them with reckless precision.

I lived fast. The kind of fast that makes people think you’re running toward something, when really, you’re running away from everything. I bled slow, carrying every wound like a sacred offering. I was the girl who always got up, brushed herself off, and stitched herself back together. And yet, somehow, I’m still here. Still strong as hell. Still breathing. Still me.

When I look at old pictures—those glossy, fading snapshots of a girl with storm clouds in her eyes and a daredevil’s grin—I barely recognize myself. It’s not the hair, or the clothes, or the blur of old film—it’s the weightlessness. That reckless, wild, and untethered person I used to be. There’s a part of me that wonders if she ever really existed. Maybe she was a fever dream stitched together by trauma and adrenaline. Maybe she was realer than anything I’ve ever been since.

I don’t know how I made it this long. That’s not false humility or poetic affectation—it’s an honest, ragged truth. I’ve lived more lives than I had any right to survive. I’ve stood at the edge more times than I’ve counted. Sometimes I think the only reason I’m still standing is because something in the universe—some stubborn, cosmic glitch—refused to let me go.

People think survival is noble. That it earns you some kind of badge or grace. But surviving isn’t noble. It’s brutal. It’s lonely. It’s waking up in the middle of the night and realizing you’re still here, and you still don’t know why.

But I do know this: I’m still that girl who lived through the ’90s. I didn’t die. I’ve just grown quieter, tougher, and maybe at times, a little sadder. I live with the memories of a hard life, full of grit, unwavering determination, and just the right amount of luck. I’m still the one who still grabs the wheel when everything’s falling apart. I’m the one who realized, at a young age, that love doesn’t have to look like a postcard, and family isn’t always blood. Every day I remind myself that it’s okay not to know who you are all the time, as long as you never pretend to be someone you’re not.

So tonight, I will pour myself a Coke Classic over ice, light a candle in the kitchen, and say a silent thank-you to that reckless, beautiful girl I used to be—for surviving long enough to become the woman I am now.

Still wild. Still whole. Still here. Still Emily.