Some girls tear down other girls as if we’re public property. I don’t play that game.
I’ve always heard girls support girls.
It’s a cute phrase. A hashtag. A thing you say.
But here’s what happened to me. The other day, I was chilling—literally, I was high on shrooms, vibing, unbothered—and I had to tell this younger girl and her little posse that they weren’t invited to my house. Simple boundary. Calm energy. I was trying to relax.
But apparently, that wasn’t allowed.
Later, she sent me this nasty message—like went out of her way to say something mean—and she made sure to tell me that in a picture I posted, my arm looked “fat” to her.
Let’s pause there. Because it didn’t. It literally didn’t. I have a small frame. My body is genetically small. My arm looked normal.
But that wasn’t the point, was it? It was never about my arm.
It was about trying to hurt me.
It was about reaching for the fastest weapon girls are taught to grab—your body.
Even when it doesn’t make sense. Even when it’s a lie. Even when it’s the weakest possible swing.
Because that’s what some girls do: They’ll strike at your body because they think that’s where you’ll break. Because they’ve been taught that we’re supposed to care what they think about our arms, our stomachs, our faces, our everything.
But here’s the thing: I don’t.
I don’t care. I’m a grown ass woman. I know what my body is. I don’t need your commentary. I didn’t ask for your notes.
And I would never do that to another girl. I would never aim for the body. I would never weaponize appearance like that.
Because I know how brutal I already am to myself. Because I know how much I’ve worked to get free from that kind of thinking.
Girls support girls isn’t a t-shirt. It’s a choice. It’s a practice. It’s a rebellion. And I choose it. Every time.
Even when you’re mean to me. Even when you try to hurt me. Even when you send the message.
I don’t play that game. I’m not here for that life. I’m here for something softer. Something real.
You don’t know me. You don’t know my story. And you sure as heck don’t know my body.
Girls support girls isn’t a trend. It’s a standard. And I don’t lower mine.
This one’s been sitting heavy on my chest for a while. For most of my life, I’ve found myself in rooms full of guys—joking with them, laughing with them, feeling like I belonged. But lately, I’ve started noticing the cracks in that comfort. This essay is about what it’s like being the only girl in the group, how easy that role can feel… until it doesn’t. It’s about misogyny hiding under the surface, the cost of calling it out, and the strange grief that comes with realizing not every friendship was what you thought it was. If you’ve ever been “the cool girl,” I hope this resonates.
I’ve been the only girl in a group of guys more times than I can count.
It’s not always intentional. It just… happens. It’s like wherever I go, I gravitate toward guys. And for most of my life, especially as I’ve gotten older, I’ve found that easier in a lot of ways. Simpler, sometimes. Less socially exhausting. More straightforward. There’s a kind of casualness in guy groups that can feel like a relief—especially when you’ve spent your life being hyper-aware of every social cue, every shift in tone, every invisible expectation in a room.
That doesn’t mean I don’t love my girlfriends. I do. Fiercely. The bonds I share with the women in my life are sacred—layered with honesty, softness, truth-telling, deep care. They hold space for things that guys often… don’t. Or can’t. Or won’t.
But still, I keep finding myself surrounded by guys. And until recently, I didn’t question that much.
Now, I do.
Because the ease I used to feel? It’s started to morph into something heavier. I’ve started to notice what I didn’t before—because I didn’t have the language or maybe the clarity to name it. I didn’t notice how much I was tolerating. How much I was excusing. How much I was shrinking myself to keep the peace or stay “cool” or not make things awkward.
When you’re the only girl, and the guys feel safe enough to really talk around you, you start to hear it all. The jokes. The comments. The assumptions. The way they talk about women when they think no one is holding them accountable. And sometimes it’s subtle—like a breeze that leaves a bruise you don’t notice until later. Other times it’s just blatant. Disrespectful. Gross. Dehumanizing.
But you laugh. Or you don’t say anything. Or you say it softly, with a little “haha” at the end so it doesn’t feel like you’re that girl—you know, the buzzkill feminist.
And here’s the thing: lately, I have been that girl. I’ve started calling them out. Naming it. Saying, “Hey, that’s not okay,” or “You don’t get to talk about women like that,” or “This isn’t funny.” And the backlash? It’s real. The pushback is intense. I get told to stop. They flat out deny it. Or laugh louder. Or say I’m ruining the vibe. They hate you for breaking the illusion. They hate you for not playing along.
And here’s the real gut punch: even when they respect you, you’re not exempt from the way they treat women. Because that’s the system. That’s patriarchy. You might be the “cool girl” to them, the one who’s “not like other girls,” but you’re still a girl. And eventually, you’ll feel it.
It also wasn’t until just this past year—after several people finally said it out loud to me, and I finally let myself believe it—that I realized something else: most of these guys wouldn’t have even tried to be friends with me if they didn’t find me attractive. And that truth? That wrecked me. Because it’s like, wait—so we’re not even really friends? You’re just sticking around because I’m pretty enough to look at?
It makes me question everything.
It makes me question every friendship I thought was real. It makes me scared to just be myself—bubbly, kind, open, warm—around new guys, because what if they’re not seeing me, they’re just seeing someone they want something from? What if they’re not even listening, they’re just waiting for a moment to turn friendship into something else?
That fear lives in me now. And I hate it. Because that warmth and friendliness? That’s just who I am. I like people. I love making new friends. I believe in being real and showing up fully. But now it feels dangerous.
I think I used to believe that if I could just be one of them—blend in, adapt, understand their world—I’d be safer. Or maybe even more powerful. I didn’t realize that sometimes, being the only girl in the group just means being the only one absorbing the full emotional weight of everything said and unsaid.
I’m tired of laughing things off. Of translating misogyny into banter. Of pretending it doesn’t hurt when they talk about women like objects and then look at me like I should be grateful they “respect me.”
There’s a toxicity that builds up—not always loud, not always cruel, but heavy. Quiet. Constant. And I’ve finally started to feel it in my bones.
I don’t have all the answers. I’m not saying I’m done having guy friends. But I’m also not going to keep pretending that being surrounded by men doesn’t come with its own kind of cost. I want my friendships to be honest. Accountable. Kind. And that includes calling shit out, not just keeping the peace.Because I deserve to be seen. Not just accepted. Not just “tolerated because I’m hot.” Seen. For real.
The night of the National Championship, January 2013, was supposed to be a moment of celebration. I was 20, a sophomore in college, and my dad had raised me to be a lifelong Notre Dame fan. It was a big deal—Notre Dame had finally made it to the championship after years of waiting, and I couldn’t wait to watch the game. But that night would be remembered for something else entirely.
After watching the game with friends at Sig Ep, I was drunk—Notre Dame was getting blown out by Alabama, and the alcohol blurred everything. But as the night wore on, something started to feel off. Steve, a friend from the house, tried to keep me there, forcing me to stay when I was clearly ready to leave. It was uncomfortable, unsettling, and I started to realize that there were moments I had dismissed as just “weird,” but in hindsight felt far darker.
I managed to get away and ran across the street to the Delt house, thinking I’d find refuge there. Scotty G, a senior, a “friend,” helped me into one of the couches, gave me a blanket to cover up. But this wasn’t the safe place I thought it would be. Not even close.
The Moment of Silence: When Rape Happens, and You Don’t Even Know It
I remember the Notre Dame jersey, the tan mini skirt, and the combat boots I was wearing. A strange outfit, a stranger feeling. I didn’t expect anything to happen that night, let alone the violation that would be forever imprinted on my memory. But then, Scotty G was there. His finger went up into me. I didn’t say a word. I didn’t flinch. I didn’t move.
I didn’t even have the vocabulary for what was happening. I didn’t know how to recognize it. I didn’t understand it. It took me years to understand. And that’s the thing no one tells you. It’s the shock, the confusion, the way your brain doesn’t allow you to process it until much, much later. It’s not like you’re lying there knowing it’s wrong, it’s like being in some kind of mental freeze, unable to move, unable to scream, unable to make sense of anything.
I stayed there, pretending to be asleep, pretending that maybe if I just stayed still long enough, it would stop. But it didn’t. He came back. And it happened again. And still, I said nothing. Not because I didn’t want to—because I was too terrified to know what to do. I didn’t know how to say, “this is rape,” because no one had ever told me what rape even looked like.
The Unspoken Truth: Power, Privilege, and the Men Who Get Away With It
What makes this all the more frustrating—and painful—is knowing that in the world we live in, Scotty G would’ve gotten away with it, regardless. He was a senior frat boy, popular, well-liked, with status in our social scene. No one would have believed me. It wasn’t just that I didn’t have the words to explain it—it was that I had no chance of being believed.
That’s the sick truth. The powerful men, the ones with the privilege, always seem to escape. They are protected by the very structures that are supposed to hold them accountable. Back then, I knew that if I had told someone, it wouldn’t have mattered. If I had said anything, he would have denied it, and I would’ve been branded the girl who “didn’t know how to handle her liquor.” I would’ve been the one blamed. He, the powerful, untouchable frat boy, would be the one to remain safe from any real consequences.
And maybe that’s what made me so numb to the entire thing for so long. It wasn’t just the immediate aftermath—it was the deeper realization that even if I had known better, there would have been no justice. The system wasn’t set up for me to win. The people who were supposed to protect me would have turned their backs, either because of my lack of status or the man’s undeniable privilege.
The Aftermath: Holding onto Shame for Years
For 10 years, I carried the shame of that night. I didn’t tell anyone, not even my closest friends, because I couldn’t bear the idea of being called weak or stupid for letting something like that happen. I convinced myself that it was my fault—maybe I’d flirted too much, maybe I’d done something to invite him in. I buried it, buried it so deep that even after I got married, I couldn’t confront it until it hit me like a wave, 10 years later, in a conversation with my husband. I broke down, not knowing where the tears were coming from. Was it shame? Was it sadness? Was it the fact that I had kept this all locked away for so long?
And when I did finally talk about it, I was struck by a horrifying realization. I started asking the women in my life—friends, sisters, coworkers—if they had ever been raped. And the answers were always the same. They would either say yes, or hesitate, only to later admit they, too, had been assaulted and never recognized it for what it was. This has become the reality for so many women.
The Ugly Truth: Why is Rape Treated Like a Fact of Life?
Why do we live in a world where rape is treated as inevitable? Where we assume that every woman, at some point, will be sexually assaulted, and that it’s something that just happens to you—like a bad meal at a restaurant, or an inconvenient experience? Why is it that we, as women, have to carry this knowledge, this horrible expectation, that our safety is never guaranteed?
The fact that Scotty G has two little girls now, daughters of his own, only makes this truth even more painful. It’s terrifying to think about how many men like him are raising children in this world. Men who could potentially raise daughters who will live in fear, just like I did. The irony is unbearable. It’s terrifying to imagine what kind of world those girls will grow up in, knowing that people like their father exist.
The Fight for Change: I Will Not Be Silent
Here’s the thing—I’m not okay with this. I’m not okay with the fact that rape happens to so many women, that we live in a world that allows it, that no one is truly held accountable for the trauma they inflict. I’m not okay with the way we treat this issue like it’s a natural part of life.
I’m not okay with the fact that I was violated, and that too many women are violated, with no one batting an eye. But I will not remain silent. I will speak. I will write. And I will do whatever I can to change this world.
We deserve better. We deserve to live in a world where our bodies are ours, where men like Scotty G don’t get away with this—where no one gets away with this. And maybe, just maybe, if enough of us speak up, we can start to shift the narrative. We can start to create a world where the next generation of girls doesn’t have to live in fear, and where men like Scotty G are held accountable, not just with shame, but with justice.
Conclusion: A Call for Justice, a Call for Change
This isn’t just my story—this is the story of every woman who’s ever been assaulted, who’s ever had her body taken from her without consent. We need to stop pretending this is okay. We need to demand a world where this no longer happens.
I won’t be silent anymore. And I hope you won’t be either.
I didn’t set out to start a blog. I didn’t even set out to “be a writer.” I just needed a place to survive.
For most of the past year, I was holding myself together with painting, poetry, long walks, and a lot of hope I wasn’t sure I even believed in. Healing was slow and messy. It still is.
Then about a month ago, something cracked open in me. Kind of like that scene in Forrest Gump — he just starts running one day and doesn’t stop. That’s what happened to me. Except instead of running across America, I started writing. And I couldn’t stop.
I started writing memoirs about my life — the real, raw parts of growing up autistic and neurodivergent and not knowing it. I started writing fictional stories where the main characters were like me — neurodivergent women who didn’t have to apologize for being different.
At first, I wasn’t thinking about anyone else reading it. I wasn’t trying to be brave. I was trying to stay alive.
Most of what I’ve written still isn’t on this blog. It lives in notebooks, Word docs, saved drafts. It lives inside of me.
But somewhere along the way — after sharing bits and pieces with my family and a few close friends — my mom looked at me and said, “I think you should share this. It’s important.”
And for once, I believed her.
Because here’s what I’ve realized: People are going to judge me and misunderstand me no matter what. Especially because I’m neurodivergent. Especially because I move through the world differently.
For most of my life, I thought if I just stayed small enough, quiet enough, “normal” enough, I could avoid that pain. Spoiler alert: it didn’t work. They judged me anyway. They misunderstood me anyway. And I just stayed silent and let it eat me alive from the inside.
I’m not doing that anymore.
This blog is me taking my voice back. It’s me standing up and saying: If you’re going to misunderstand me, fine — but it won’t be because I hid. It won’t be because I stayed silent. It won’t be because I let fear win.
Sharing my writing started as an act of survival. Now it’s also an act of rebellion. It’s an act of love — for myself, for my community, for anyone who’s ever been made to feel like their voice doesn’t matter.
The beautiful part? The surprise I didn’t even see coming? My words have actually helped people. They’ve made people feel seen. They’ve made people cry, and laugh, and think. And that’s all I’ve ever wanted: To make the world a little softer. A little freer. A little more human.
I also realized I can’t just tell my story without telling the bigger story too. Neurodiversity matters. Representation matters. Advocacy matters.
Most people don’t even know what “neurodivergent” means. Most people have a cartoon version of autism or ADHD in their heads that hurts real people every single day. And I’m tired of being silent about that too.
This blog is my small way of pushing back against a world that doesn’t want to listen — and creating a new space where maybe, just maybe, someone will.
It’s also about education. It’s about fighting for teachers, students, and schools that are being crushed under systems that don’t care about them. I left teaching as a career because it was killing me — but I didn’t leave it as a passion. And now that I’m standing on the outside, breathing again, I feel like it’s my responsibility to use whatever strength I have left to fight for the people still inside.
Education is a human right. Neurodivergent people deserve to be understood, not “fixed.” Mental health isn’t optional. Workers deserve better than barely surviving in broken systems. Women deserve autonomy over their bodies and their lives. We all deserve better.
This blog isn’t big. It’s not loud. But it’s mine. And it’s honest. And it’s full of heart.
If it helps even one person feel seen — if it plants even one seed for change — then it’s worth it.
Thank you for being here. Thank you for reading. Thank you for listening.
I’m just getting started. 💛
👉 If you’re new here, feel free to explore my essays, reflections, and stories. I’m so grateful you’re here. 🌼
🕰️ The Timewalker: Part One – The Threads We Carry
This is the first part of a story I’ve been writing—about Wren, a young autistic and ADHD woman who can time travel with her black cat, Cat. She doesn’t change history with brute force—she changes it with empathy, insight, and by seeing what others miss. This is for anyone who’s ever felt too much, asked too many questions, or been told they don’t belong. You do. We always have.
Chapter One: The Crack in the Wall
Wren didn’t notice the crack until Cat meowed at it.
She was mid-scroll, knees pulled up to her chest, half-wrapped in a blanket burrito on her thrifted couch. Outside, the sky was sulking in that half-hearted spring way—too grey to be comforting, too cold to justify another hot chocolate. Cat, for his part, had been sitting by the back wall for a solid ten minutes, staring like it had personally offended him.
“Okay,” she muttered. “What existential threat have you found now?”
Cat flicked his tail once, slow and deliberate, and didn’t look at her.
Wren squinted at the wall. She’d lived in this studio apartment for three months now. The paint was peeling. The windows whined when the wind blew. The radiator was possessed. But the wall? The wall had never cracked before.
She stood, her joints stiff, and padded over in sock feet. The air near the wall felt colder. Not “the landlord forgot to insulate” cold—off cold. Like a breeze from a place that wasn’t here. She pressed her hand to the surface.
The crack was hair-thin but long, stretching like a jagged smile from the baseboard halfway up the plaster. Wren traced it with one finger. It thrummed faintly beneath her touch, like a heartbeat. Like it was… waiting.
Nope. Nope nope nope.
She stepped back. “Okay, no haunted apartment wall nonsense today.”
Cat meowed again, sharper this time.
Wren sighed. “You’re a menace.”
She scooped him up. He was heavier than he looked, all muscle and indignation. He immediately began to purr, but his eyes stayed fixed on the wall.
Wren had always noticed things other people didn’t.
The way certain lights buzzed so loudly she couldn’t think. The subtle shift in someone’s tone before they got annoyed. The patterns in ceiling tiles. The weight of words unsaid.
It wasn’t magic, exactly. Just her brain doing its own thing. A blessing and a curse, depending on the day.
Today, it mostly felt like a curse.
She’d been running on fumes for months before she finally crashed. Dropped out of her grad program. Stopped replying to texts. Moved back to her hometown because the rent was cheap and nobody asked questions.
Everyone said she was “too smart to burn out.” As if intelligence could somehow override sensory overload or social exhaustion. As if she hadn’t been masking since age five and it didn’t cost her everything.
The only one who didn’t expect anything from her was Cat. And possibly the wall.
That night, Wren couldn’t sleep.
She lay on her side, staring at the ceiling fan creak its slow, tired circles. Cat was curled at the foot of the bed, snoring in his own weird little way—like a tiny engine powering some ancient machine.
At 2:13 AM, she got up and padded to the wall again.
The crack was glowing.
Barely. Faint enough she might have missed it if not for the way the light danced—blue and silver, like moonlight on water.
She knelt. Reached out.
The moment her fingertips brushed the glow, the air shifted. Her room dissolved.
The couch, the radiator, the fan, the city outside—gone.
Replaced by warmth. Dust. Sunlight filtering through olive trees.
And a boy in a white tunic staring at her like she’d just fallen out of the sky.
Which, to be fair, she sort of had.
Chapter Two: Olive Branches and Open Mouths
The first thing Wren noticed was the heat.
It wasn’t the cloying humidity of Florida, or the stale radiators she grew up with—it was dry and golden, like sunlight had been ground into dust and sprinkled across the earth. The air smelled like dirt, thyme, and something floral she couldn’t name.
The second thing she noticed was that she was barefoot.
The grass was soft but scratchy. Too real. Too here. She looked down and realized her hoodie and leggings were still on her body, but the crack in the wall—the wall—was nowhere in sight.
And the boy in the tunic was still staring at her.
He looked about her age, maybe younger, with a face carved in curiosity and wide, stunned eyes. His tunic was off-white and belted at the waist. He held a clay jar in one hand, frozen mid-step.
“Uh,” Wren said. “Hi?”
The boy blinked. “You speak Greek?”
Wren blinked right back. “I—what?”
The words had slipped out of her mouth in her usual accent, but he had spoken something entirely different, and she had somehow… understood it. Not like she was translating, but like her brain had already sorted it before she could even question it.
“I—guess so?” she said.
He took a cautious step forward. “Are you a spirit?”
Wren blinked. “No. Just a girl. With a cat. Who is… not currently visible.”
Cat, of course, had disappeared.
Or had never come through the crack at all.
Her stomach flipped.
“Where am I?” she asked. “This isn’t Florida. This isn’t… this isn’t 2025.”
The boy tilted his head. “Twenty-what?”
Wren took a deep breath. The scent of olive trees hit her full force. She turned in a slow circle. Beyond the grove was a cluster of stone buildings, whitewashed and glowing in the late-afternoon light. Hills rose in the distance, dotted with cypress trees. A goat bleated somewhere nearby.
“I think,” she said softly, “I just time traveled.”
The boy dropped his jar.
It shattered on the ground.
They called him Thanos. Not like the purple guy, but short for Athanasios. He led her toward the village, cautiously, like she might disappear or smite him at any moment.
Wren was too overwhelmed to do anything but follow.
Her senses were on fire. The sound of sandals against the packed earth, the way the sky seemed wider, the chirping of insects—everything was so loud, so unfiltered. There was no air conditioning hum, no traffic, no glowing screens. Just… life.
And smells. Cooking fires. Wild herbs. Animal musk. Sweat.
Sensory overload threatened to swallow her whole.
“Breathe,” she whispered to herself. “In. Out. In. Out.”
Thanos looked over, concerned. “You’re not ill, are you?”
“No. Just… autistic.”
He frowned. “I do not know this word.”
Wren exhaled through her nose. “That makes two of us, honestly.”
The village was small—white buildings with flat roofs, narrow pathways, and pottery everywhere. People wore tunics, worked with their hands, and gave Wren many side-eyes as she passed.
A woman muttered something and made a gesture with her hands. A little girl pointed and laughed. A goat tried to eat Wren’s hoodie drawstring.
Thanos whispered, “They think you’re a nymph. Or a witch. Or Hermes in disguise.”
“Well,” Wren muttered, swatting the goat away, “Hermes does have great taste in shoes.”
“Who sent you?” he asked seriously. “The Oracle?”
“I don’t think anyone sent me. Unless Cat counts.”
Thanos stared.
Wren pinched the bridge of her nose. “I don’t even know why I’m here, okay? One minute I was in my apartment, touching a weird crack in the wall, and the next I’m standing in an olive grove getting goat-nibbled.”
“I believe you,” he said. “Strange things happen in this land.”
They reached a house with wide stone steps and a columned entrance. “My father is a philosopher,” Thanos said. “He’ll want to speak with you.”
“Oh great,” Wren muttered. “A man with opinions.”
As she stepped into the cool interior, Wren paused. The house smelled like ink and parchment, and roasted garlic. A different kind of grounding.
The moment she entered, an older man looked up from a scroll. His eyes narrowed as he took her in—sweatpants, hoodie, messy bun, and all.
“Who,” he asked in a measured voice, “is this?”
“This is Wren,” Thanos said. “She fell from the sky.”
Wren opened her mouth. Closed it. Sighed. “Hi.”
The philosopher stood. “You are not from here.”
“Nope.”
“You wear strange clothing.”
“Comfy,” she said, tugging on her hoodie.
“You are alone?”
“…I lost my cat.”
There was a beat of silence.
And then the philosopher did something strange.
He smiled.
Chapter Three: The Quiet Ones
The philosopher’s name was Damon. His house smelled like intellect and olives.
Wren spent the next few days sleeping in a corner room with a woven mat, trying to make sense of the century she’d fallen into. Cat was still missing. Every morning, she scanned the hills and alleyways. Every night, she whispered into the warm, candlelit dark, “Find me, please.”
But she wasn’t idle.
She asked questions—more than most people thought proper—and she answered with precision, especially when Damon invited her to his gatherings with other thinkers.
At first, they humored her. Then they underestimated her. Then they realized she could run mental circles around them.
Wren had always thought in spiderwebs—a million threads spinning at once, connecting across time and space and seemingly unrelated things. In this world of orators and scholars, her fast, pattern-obsessed brain was suddenly not a liability but a superpower.
Still, the women never spoke.
They poured wine, prepared figs, swept thresholds.
One afternoon, Wren caught a girl named Myrine watching her.
She was maybe twelve, eyes like polished amber, and she flinched every time someone raised their voice. She barely spoke, and when she did, she whispered in rhymes under her breath.
Wren approached slowly, like she might a bird in the woods.
“You think in pictures too, don’t you?” Wren asked.
Myrine nodded so faintly it was like her head caught a breeze.
Wren knelt beside her. “Do you hate loud sounds?”
Another nod.
“Do you repeat things in your head when the world feels too big?”
This time, Myrine smiled. Not big. Just enough.
“You’re not broken,” Wren said gently. “You’re like me.”
They met in secret—Myrine and three other girls who never quite “fit.” One lined up pebbles along the edge of the courtyard and remembered everything. One hummed tunelessly and had eyes that darted everywhere, absorbing it all. One never made eye contact but painted wild, aching beauty in the dirt with a stick.
They had been called “difficult.” “Touched.” “Useless.”
Wren called them brilliant.
She told them they were ancient minds living in a world that didn’t know how to see them.
And they listened—rapt, wide-eyed, and lit from the inside.
Wren taught them how to name their needs. How to stim safely. How to use metaphors and speak in ways the world might understand. Not to conform—but to be heard.
The debate came on the fifth evening.
A philosopher named Nikandros—booming voice, broad shoulders, ego like Mount Olympus—declared that women were unfit for reason. “Emotion is their language. They do not possess the spine for truth,” he said, sipping wine like the world existed to applaud him.
Wren rose slowly.
She hadn’t planned to speak.
But rage was a kind of lightning, and she had long since stopped trying to contain it.
“If emotion disqualifies a person from truth,” she said, “then why do your men kill over insults and spill blood for pride?”
Laughter rippled across the room. Uneasy. Intrigued.
Damon, seated nearby, gave a single approving nod.
“You think yourself clever,” Nikandros said. “But cleverness is not wisdom.”
“No,” Wren agreed. “But noticing patterns is. And I see a pattern in who is allowed to speak, and who is told to pour the wine.”
A stunned hush.
Wren pressed forward.
“I’ve watched women listen more closely than any man here. I’ve seen young girls calculate silence like it’s currency. We have minds like rivers and memories like maps. We see what you miss because you dismiss it.”
Nikandros rose.
“Would you debate me, then?” he asked, half-mocking.
“I already am,” Wren said, and smiled.
They debated for hours. Rhetoric, logic, ethics.
Wren was relentless—her ADHD hyperfocus locked in, her autistic need for precision turned razor-sharp. She took every assumption and flipped it inside out like a garment.
When the crowd finally dispersed, it was with muttering, awe, and no clear victor.
But Nikandros sat down quietly.
And poured her the wine.
Later that night, as the sky bruised purple over the hills, Wren sat beneath a fig tree with Myrine and the others. They practiced words: “I prefer quiet.” “I need space.” “Please speak slower.”
Myrine asked, “Will girls like us ever be remembered?”
Wren looked out at the horizon.
“Maybe not by name,” she said softly. “But I think—maybe—they’ll remember the shift. Like something cracked open here, and the light changed.”
A sudden rustle behind her.
Wren turned—and there, trotting across the grass like he owned the timeline, was Cat.
“Mrrp,” he announced, tail high.
Wren let out a laugh that turned into a sob. She scooped him up and held him to her chest.
“You found me,” she whispered. “I knew you would.”
Cat headbutted her chin.
“Okay,” Wren said, wiping her face. “That’s enough emotional vulnerability for the day.”
Chapter Four: The Smell of Smoke and Salt
The wind changed first.
It swept in low and strange through the fig trees, curling at Wren’s ankles like invisible ribbon. The hairs on her arms stood up. Even Cat paused mid-paw-lick and blinked toward the hills like he heard something she couldn’t.
Wren stood slowly, narrowing her eyes at the horizon.
The world shimmered. Just slightly. Like a heat wave or a memory.
She looked at the girls, still laughing and etching patterns into the dirt.
A pang of ache tightened in her chest. She didn’t want to leave them. She hadn’t realized until now that she could.
But the tug in her ribs, the pulse in her temples—it was starting again. The same way it had before.
Time was shifting.
Calling her forward.
Cat leapt onto her shoulder like he knew what was coming.
“Tell your truths,” she whispered to Myrine. “Even if the world isn’t ready.”
Myrine nodded, solemn and glowing like she’d swallowed a little sun.
And then, in a blink—
The world fractured.
A sharp CRACK, like thunder pulled sideways. Air ripped open in front of her—a seam of light and wind and impossible sound—and Wren was lifted off her feet, not by force but by fate.
Cat yowled, claws digging into her hoodie.
There was no time to scream.
Only a flicker of images: ink-stained parchment, cobblestone streets, muskets in shadow, candles behind shuttered windows, and the smell—smoke and salt and something like revolution.
She landed hard.
On her side, in a narrow alleyway, pressed between two brick buildings that felt too close. The air was colder. Damp. And filled with sound—horse hooves, footsteps, men shouting about shipments, someone ringing a bell.
Cat launched from her shoulder, hissed at a passing rat, then casually started licking his paw like he hadn’t just been yeeted through a time-hole.
Wren groaned, sat up, and checked herself. No broken bones. Her brain was buzzing like a hive, though. The sensory input was intense—unfiltered, wild. A whole new century was crashing in.
She took a deep breath and looked around.
She was in a port town. Somewhere northern. The street signs were carved wood, and everyone was dressed in layers of wool, linen, and pride.
A boy nearby looked at her with wide eyes and dropped his basket of apples.
“Sorry,” Wren muttered, trying to act like she hadn’t just fallen out of a tear in the space-time continuum.
She stood up and adjusted her coat.
“I need to stop landing in eras where pants on women are a scandal,” she muttered.
Cat meowed in agreement.
As they wandered toward the noise of the town square, Wren caught fragments of conversations:
“…British troops settin’ up down by the wharf…” “…Governor’s tax again, it’s robbery…” “…Franklin says we need to organize…”
Wren’s heart sped up.
She wasn’t in just any moment.
She was in the thick of it—colonial America, right before the Revolution.
A time when everything was about to ignite.
And Wren, girl of patterns and paradox, had a front row seat.
She turned to Cat. “Alright, buddy. Let’s go accidentally change history—again.”
Cat blinked slowly, like he was the one keeping it all together.
They stepped into the square.
The scent of rebellion lingered in the air like smoke that hadn’t started rising yet.
Chapter Five: The Quiet Power of Eliza
The square was alive.
Voices overlapped in a symphony of tension: merchants haggling over taxed goods, young boys dodging carts with handmade pamphlets clutched in ink-stained hands, and soldiers on the edge of suspicion.
Wren kept her head low and her mouth shut. Observation first—always. That’s what made her a decent time traveler: she didn’t barge in with answers. She watched. She listened.
And she followed the thread of discomfort. That strange static that came when the world felt off—not just politically, but personally. That thread always led her to people who felt like her. People whose inner lives didn’t fit into the neat boxes history tried to fold them into.
Which is probably why she noticed her.
A woman in a slate-blue dress, standing slightly apart from the bustle, one hand pressed to her chest like she was holding in a breath. She wasn’t panicked. But her eyes… her eyes flicked across the crowd like she was scanning for patterns.
Like she saw too much—and didn’t know where to put it all.
Cat slinked ahead, tail high.
Wren followed.
When she got closer, she recognized her. From paintings. From letters she’d studied in her college history seminar, back when she was still trying to pass as “normal” and didn’t yet know her brain was wired differently.
Eliza Schuyler Hamilton.
Not yet the wife of Alexander. Still Eliza Schuyler. But already brilliant. Already overlooked.
Wren approached slowly. “Excuse me… are you alright?”
Eliza blinked, startled. “I—yes. I believe so. Just… too many voices at once. My sister says I feel everything too much.”
Wren smiled gently. “That’s not a flaw. It’s a skill—just not one this world knows how to use yet.”
Eliza tilted her head. “Do we know each other?”
“No,” Wren said carefully. “But maybe we should.”
Cat brushed against Eliza’s leg, purring softly. She knelt instinctively and stroked his fur with the kind of tenderness that made Wren’s throat tighten.
“You’re not from here, are you?” Eliza asked.
Wren’s lips twitched. “That obvious?”
“Not your accent. Your eyes. They look like they’ve seen something the rest of us haven’t yet.”
Wren took a breath. “I know what it feels like to be underestimated. To be too much and not enough at the same time. To hold so many ideas in your head it feels like you’ll crack open if you don’t let them out—but no one listens.”
Eliza stared at her.
Then slowly—slowly—she nodded.
“There is something I’ve been writing,” she said cautiously, “but my father believes it improper.”
“I’d love to read it,” Wren said. “Or hear it. Or help you finish it. Whatever you need.”
For the first time, Eliza smiled.
“Then perhaps we should talk.”
Over the next few days, Wren and Eliza met in secret corners of the garden or tucked behind shelves in her family’s expansive library. Eliza shared drafts of letters—sharp and articulate, questioning loyalty, liberty, and the roles women were expected to play in a revolution that barely saw them.
Wren encouraged her to keep writing.
They spoke of freedom—not just the country’s, but their own.
They even joked about Wren entering a public debate disguised as a young male scholar. “No one would expect a woman to argue Plato better than half the men in Boston,” Wren smirked.
“Especially not one with a cat on her shoulder,” Eliza teased.
Cat sneezed dramatically.
On the day of the debate—a gathering of men discussing “the moral implications of resistance”—Wren did exactly what she wasn’t supposed to do:
She showed up. Uninvited. Underdressed. Unapologetic.
And when a man half-drunk on brandy scoffed that women were too emotional to understand liberty, Wren rose from her seat, cleared her throat, and said:
“Then you haven’t been listening to the right women.”
And she spoke.
Not just for herself. Not just for Eliza. But for every woman who carried the revolution in her bones and was told to stay quiet.
And for once, the room listened.
Eliza, standing in the back, didn’t cheer.
She nodded. Like something had shifted.
And maybe it had.
That night, the portal returned—rising behind the Schuyler family’s stable like fog burning gold at the edges.
Eliza walked Wren there, quiet.
“I don’t know where you came from,” she said, “but you made me feel… possible.”
Wren swallowed the lump in her throat. “Promise me you’ll keep writing.”
“I will. Even if no one reads it now.”
“Someone will,” Wren whispered. “Someday.”
Cat meowed in farewell.
And then the air split open again—pulling them into the next story.
The next fire.
The next thread.
Chapter Six: Echoes in the Smoke
The portal spat Wren and Cat out into a storm of gray and silence.
Ash drifted on the wind like snow.
They landed hard, knees scraping against frozen soil. The air was thick with gunpowder and grief, the kind that clung to the bones of the earth long after the battles ended.
“Civil War,” Wren whispered, pulling her coat tighter. “Mid-war, maybe. Or just after.”
Cat pawed at a stray Union cap lying half-buried in the mud, then shook his fur out like he’d just stepped through a bad dream.
They walked.
No portal had ever felt quite like this—not just like a place, but a weight. Like the timeline was humming with pain, and history was bleeding through the cracks of itself.
Eventually, they reached a farmhouse. Crumbling at the edges, but not abandoned. Candles flickered in the window. Laundry hung limp on a crooked line.
Inside, Wren found her: an older Black woman with sharp eyes and a steadiness Wren felt all the way in her chest.
“Name’s Clara,” she said after a long pause. “You came through the woods like a ghost.”
“I’m… passing through,” Wren offered, not quite lying.
Clara didn’t press. She had the look of someone who’d seen stranger things than girls who didn’t quite fit into the year.
Clara was a teacher. A former enslaved woman who’d escaped to the North and had returned South after the Emancipation Proclamation to help build freedom from the ground up—one student at a time.
She kept a school in her sitting room, with salvaged desks and handmade chalkboards. She taught children to read and to question.
And she kept a trunk under her bed, filled with things she called important.
That’s where Wren found it.
A small, leather-bound book. Worn at the edges, pages softened by time and touch.
Not a journal.
A collection of letters.
Wren flipped one open and her breath caught.
The handwriting. The cadence. The questions.
Eliza.
The title read: “Reflections on Liberty, Womanhood, and the Hidden Cost of Revolution” – E.S.
Wren blinked back sudden tears.
“You know it?” Clara asked, curious but calm.
“She—she was a friend,” Wren said hoarsely.
Clara nodded. “Came into my hands through a Quaker family in Pennsylvania. One of the daughters was passing them around to women meeting in secret. I think her mother had gotten them from an abolitionist out of Boston. I only know this much: these words? They made me fight.”
Wren swallowed hard. “Can I read it?”
Clara gestured to a rocking chair. “All the time in the world, baby.”
That night, as thunder rolled in the distance and Cat curled on her lap, Wren read Eliza’s words like scripture. They weren’t just poetic—they were strategic. Arguments for equality, compassion, education. Questions about how the country could birth freedom while binding half its people.
And in one tucked-away note, Wren found this:
“If I cannot change history now, perhaps I can plant questions in the hearts of women who will.”
Wren closed the book and held it to her chest.
It was working. Eliza’s quiet fire had traveled from girl to girl, heart to heart, until it reached Clara. And now Wren.
And that changed everything.
The next morning, Clara asked Wren to speak to her students.
“They won’t understand where you came from,” she said, “but they’ll feel what you know.”
Wren took a deep breath. She talked about asking questions, about using your voice even when it shakes, about how people had always tried to write women and neurodivergent folks out of the story—but they were never really gone. They were the margin notes in history’s great manuscript. Waiting for someone to read them out loud.
The children listened. Wide-eyed. One girl—ten, maybe—sat straight-backed in the front row, fingers tapping her knees in a rhythm Wren recognized.
After, that same girl asked Wren if it was “bad to think different from everyone else.”
This time, it opened not with urgency, but with purpose.
Like it knew Wren had found something she needed.
As she stood in its glow, Clara pressed the book into her hands. “Take it. Maybe someone else needs to read it next.”
Wren hugged her. “They will.”
She stepped into the light, Cat following behind, tail brushing Clara’s skirts.
Time cracked open again.
And the echoes of Eliza’s words traveled forward—riding with Wren toward whatever came next.
Chapter Seven: Ink on the Walls
The portal dropped Wren and Cat into heat and stillness.
This time, they landed in a narrow alley, the smell of fried okra and train smoke in the air, the sound of gospel floating from a distant window. The sun bore down on a small southern town—Georgia, maybe Alabama. Wren could tell from the way people looked over their shoulders when walking past the “Whites Only” signs.
Cat leapt gracefully to a nearby windowsill and meowed, annoyed.
“I know, buddy,” Wren murmured. “We’re not welcome here.”
They slipped down side streets until they found it—a faded sign above a brick building: “The Magnolia School for Colored Girls – Founded 1892.”
Inside, everything was worn but shining with care. Fresh chalk on the board. A vase of wildflowers on the teacher’s desk. Sunlight slanting through gauzy curtains.
And standing in the middle of the room, fixing a stubborn map of Africa to the wall, was a woman in her thirties. Tall. Graceful. Eyes like flint.
She turned, startled. “Can I help you?”
“I’m Wren,” she said. “I’m… passing through.”
The woman didn’t ask how Wren got in. Just narrowed her eyes like she’d met a few mysteries in her life already.
“I’m Miss Lila Ashby. You here for the reading circle?”
Wren blinked. “The what?”
Lila smiled. “We meet after school. Read and write things we can’t say out loud in daylight.”
Wren felt that old tug in her chest. This was the person she came to meet.
That night, Lila invited Wren to stay for dinner. Collard greens, black-eyed peas, cornbread. Cat got his own saucer of milk, which he licked with exaggerated dignity.
After the meal, Lila pulled out a tattered envelope.
“I keep this with me,” she said. “Been passed down through women in my family for three generations.”
She unfolded the pages carefully.
Wren’s breath caught.
It was Eliza’s letter. The same one Clara had kept. But this one had notes in the margins. New thoughts. New fire.
Clara’s handwriting.
And below that, new lines. Slanted and graceful.
Lila’s.
“I don’t know who this Eliza was,” Lila said, voice soft but reverent, “but her words traveled like a song. Clara was my great-aunt. She taught my mother to read using this. My mother taught me.”
Wren looked up, stunned.
“She said the words would call out to the right women. The ones with questions.” Lila met Wren’s eyes. “They called to you, didn’t they?”
Wren nodded slowly. “They always do.”
That weekend, Wren sat in the back of the reading circle while girls aged ten to sixteen took turns reading passages from banned books. Some shared poems they’d written. One girl wrote about feeling like her mind was “a thousand bees and a thunderstorm,” and Wren nearly cried.
Afterward, Wren asked her about it.
“I don’t talk right. Not like the others. My teachers say I’m too loud, too fast.”
Wren knelt beside her. “You’re not broken. You’re brilliant.”
The girl smiled, just a flicker. “Miss Lila says that too.”
“Miss Lila’s right.”
That night, Lila confessed that she sometimes wondered if her resistance mattered.
“They close our schools. Burn our books. Treat us like shadows.” She clenched her fists. “What if nothing changes?”
Wren handed her a note. Just a scrap of paper, but on it she’d written:
“If I cannot change history now, perhaps I can plant questions in the hearts of women who will.”
Lila read it in silence. “Eliza.”
“She did change history. So did Clara. So are you.”
When the portal came, Wren felt it like a breath on her neck—soft but sure.
She hugged Lila, who whispered, “Take the letter. It belongs to the ones who carry it forward.”
Wren tucked it into her satchel beside Cat, who let out a satisfied purr.
As the light began to shimmer around them, Wren glanced back one last time.
Lila was already back at the blackboard, chalk in hand, writing a new question for her students.
“What would freedom look like if you wrote the rules?”
Chapter Nine: The Vote That Wasn’t Enough
The portal opened with the crackle of static and the scent of warm asphalt. Wren landed hard on the sidewalk, Cat tumbling beside her and letting out an indignant mrow as a car with tailfins whooshed past.
They were in the South again. This time: Selma, Alabama. 1965.
There were signs everywhere. Literal ones: “COLORED ENTRANCE,” “REGISTER TO VOTE HERE.” And invisible ones, too: tight shoulders, wary eyes, the heavy silence of a community waiting to be heard.
Cat stuck close this time, tail twitching.
Wren ducked into a small church with a crooked sign that read “Voter Education Project – Meeting Tonight.” Inside, people filled every pew. At the front stood a young woman in a plaid dress with hair pinned back and eyes like steel.
“Tonight we don’t talk about what we can’t do,” she was saying. “We talk about what we will. We will walk. We will write. We will vote. And we will not be moved.”
Her name was Ruthie Clare Ashby—a descendant of Lila Ashby, Wren realized with a quiet thrill. And in Ruthie’s hand, just like before, was the same envelope. A little more tattered. A little more powerful.
After the meeting, Ruthie caught Wren watching.
“You one of the volunteers from the North?” she asked.
Wren hesitated. “Something like that.”
Ruthie didn’t press. She just said, “We’re marching on Sunday. Selma to Montgomery. We’re tired of waiting for justice.”
That weekend, Wren walked beside Ruthie across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The crowd was electric—hope and fear braided together. Cat peeked out from Wren’s satchel, ears twitching.
Wren kept pace with Ruthie, who carried a sign that read:
“We hold these truths…”
But just as they reached the crest of the bridge, the police came into view—lined up, mounted, unmoving.
Wren felt time tighten around her like a fist.
And then it happened.
The charge. The batons. The gas. People screaming, running, holding one another. Ruthie’s sign flying into the air like a bird with clipped wings.
Wren pulled Ruthie to the side, shielding her with her own body, Cat hissing fiercely from the bag.
When the smoke cleared, they were still standing. Bruised. Coughing. But standing.
That night, Ruthie showed Wren her version of the letter. She had copied the words of Eliza and Clara, added Lila’s teaching notes, and then something of her own:
“I march because someone marched for me before I was born. I speak because someone was silenced. I vote because someone was told they couldn’t. I will not stop.”
“I don’t know if it’ll change anything,” Ruthie said, her voice low, almost breaking. “People keep saying the vote is ours. But it’s not—not really. Not yet.”
Wren reached for her hand.
“It will be. You’re making it true.”
As the portal shimmered to life behind her, Wren turned back once more.
Ruthie stood tall in the doorway of the church, hands ink-stained from writing new flyers, a group of teenagers listening to her with the kind of rapt attention people once gave prophets.
Wren knew what came next—the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the years of struggle ahead.
But in this moment, she let herself believe in the power of small seeds. Because this chapter—the one about the vote that wasn’t quite enough—was still being written.
Chapter Ten: The Echo Chamber
The portal whooshed open behind an old TV repair shop, and Wren landed in a pile of garbage bags next to a neon sign that flickered “OPEN” even though it clearly wasn’t.
Cat leapt gracefully onto a rusted dumpster, tail swishing like an antenna.
Wren dusted herself off and looked around. Brick buildings. Synth-pop leaking from a boombox across the street. Teens in denim jackets and crimped hair laughing under a mural of Ronald Reagan.
The year was 1983, and America was buying what Reagan was selling: “Morning in America.” Optimism. Patriotism. And the slow, quiet erosion of everything people like Ruthie had fought for.
Wren found herself wandering through a public library—the kind with sun-yellowed carpeting and that faint, nostalgic book smell. Cat trailed her down the aisles.
She wasn’t sure what she was looking for until she spotted a zine rack in the corner, half-hidden by outdated encyclopedias.
One stapled pamphlet caught her eye: “We Remember Ruthie Ashby.”
She grabbed it, heart racing.
Inside: grainy photographs of Ruthie marching in Selma, teaching literacy classes, protesting the closure of voting access centers.
But also: a timeline. A note about her suspicious arrest in 1971. A quote scribbled in blue ink:
“Freedom isn’t free, and it doesn’t stay. You have to keep choosing it, every day.”
Wren’s heart ached. In the zine’s final pages was a name: Tasha, Ruthie’s niece, now leading a small grassroots coalition in a city riddled with “war on drugs” propaganda and broken mental health systems.
Wren tracked her down in a community center in D.C.
Tasha was in her thirties, wearing a “Silence = Death” pin and running a voter registration booth between a needle exchange clinic and a free meal line.
“You look like you read,” she said to Wren, raising an eyebrow.
“I try,” Wren replied.
Tasha snorted. “Then read this.” She shoved a flyer into Wren’s hand: MENTAL HEALTH RIGHTS ARE CIVIL RIGHTS.
Tasha had grown up reading her aunt Ruthie’s letters—just like Lila had read Clara’s, and Ruthie had studied Eliza’s.
Each generation passed down truth like contraband in a world that didn’t want it printed.
She told Wren about the cuts to public mental health programs, the closure of institutions with no community care to replace them, the stigma swallowing up neurodivergent people—especially poor and Black.
“We don’t get to have breakdowns,” Tasha said. “We get criminalized, or pathologized, or erased.”
Wren felt it in her bones—the aching familiarity of being misunderstood, too much, too sensitive, too different.
“You ever feel like the world wasn’t made for your kind of brain?” Wren asked.
Tasha nodded slowly. “Every damn day. But I’m here anyway.”
They stood together at a rally the next day, holding signs that read:
“Disability Rights Are Human Rights.” “Our Brains Deserve a Future.”
And beneath her breath, Wren whispered, “So do our hearts.”
Cat purred, rubbing against her leg.
Wren didn’t rewrite a law that day. She didn’t change the President’s mind or undo the damage done by greed disguised as greatness.
But she saw Tasha hand a flyer to a teenage girl who looked like she hadn’t spoken in weeks, and the girl smiled.
And that—that was something.
The portal began to hum again, its pull gentle but insistent.
Wren turned to Tasha. “What should I remember?”
Tasha smiled. “That we were here. And we kept going.”
Chapter Eleven: The Girl Who Always Asked Why
The portal opened not with a bang, but a hum—a kind of warmth that wrapped around Wren like her favorite blanket used to. She landed softly on a sunlit patch of carpet, the air filled with the scent of plastic dolls, peanut butter, and freshly mown grass.
It was 1997. And Wren was home.
Well… a home. Her childhood home, specifically. Cat gave a curious chirp and padded off through the kitchen like he belonged there.
Wren stood in the living room, blinking. VHS tapes lined the entertainment center. A lava lamp bubbled in the corner. A Lisa Frank notebook sat open on the coffee table—her own handwriting looping across the page in colorful gel pen:
“WHY does everyone say I’m bossy? I’m not bossy. I just KNOW STUFF.”
She wandered into the hallway and stopped cold.
There she was. Little Wren. Eight years old. Barefoot. Wearing a bright blue Tweedy Bird shirt and pacing in front of a corkboard with tacked-up drawings and index cards labeled things like “FROGS,” “WEIRD WORDS,” “HOW DO BRAINS WORK??”
She was muttering to herself, scripting conversations and flipping a fidgety plastic bracelet around her wrist. And she looked tired—the kind of tired that sits in your bones when the world doesn’t make sense and no one believes you when you say so.
Adult Wren swallowed the lump rising in her throat.
Cat brushed past Little Wren’s leg. The girl startled. Looked down.
“…Where did you come from?” she asked.
Cat blinked slowly and flopped over, purring like a tiny engine.
Little Wren giggled—sincerely—and for a moment, the air lightened.
Later that day, Wren watched her younger self sit at the kitchen table, frustrated as her mom tried to help with a worksheet. There was too much noise. The light buzzed overhead. The paper felt scratchy under her hand and the pencil was too loud on the page.
“No, no, NO,” Little Wren cried, covering her ears.
“I don’t understand why this is so hard for you,” her mom said.
Adult Wren whispered, “Because no one saw your wiring. But you were brilliant.”
That night, after bedtime, Wren slipped back into her childhood room and sat beside her younger self as she dreamt—still talking in her sleep, still asking questions no one ever really answered.
She left something behind before she went: A letter. Folded, aged, and laced with everything she wished someone had told her.
“You’re not broken. You’re building. You feel things deeply because you see deeply. Your brain isn’t wrong—it’s a lighthouse. Stay curious. You’re going to change the world just by surviving it.
Love, You.”
She placed it under the pillow. Cat gave her a knowing look.
The portal opened once more, and this time it shimmered like a memory that never really left.
Chapter Twelve: The Threads Between Us
The portal dropped Wren in the middle of a city park, not far from a small lake reflecting streaks of orange and pink. It was quiet. Familiar. She knew that bench. That tree. This was now.
Cat trotted ahead and leapt up onto a picnic table, tail flicking like punctuation.
Wren stood still. The world buzzed differently here—less dramatic than Ancient Greece or Civil War battlefields, but heavy in its own way. She’d just come from every version of the fight: for freedom, for visibility, for truth, for voice. And now she was standing in a world where the fight was quieter, sneakier, and still so far from over.
She sat down and pulled out the leather notebook she’d carried through every jump. Pages stuffed with names—Clara, Eliza, Ruthie, Tasha—and places—Athens, Virginia, Selma, Seneca Falls.
At the top of a fresh page, she wrote:
“We’ve always been here.”
Across the park, a little girl was melting down in front of a playground—screaming, overwhelmed, misunderstood. A parent looked around, embarrassed, whispering sharp instructions. Wren didn’t interfere. But she noticed.
A teenage boy sat alone on a bench, headphones in, drawing meticulous doodles into the corners of his math homework. Probably called lazy, maybe just lost. Wren saw him.
Nearby, a group of college students rallied with signs reading:
“Neurodivergent Not Broken.” “Mental Health Is a Right.” “We Are the Future, Too.”
Wren smiled.
Cat meowed loudly at a passing jogger and curled into Wren’s lap like a weighted blanket. She scratched behind his ears.
“I get it now,” she murmured. “Everywhere I went, there were people like me. Hidden. Dismissed. Fighting quietly.”
That night, Wren sat in her apartment surrounded by old books, protest pins, and sketches of portals she’d drawn half-asleep. Cat lay curled beside her notebook as she flipped through her memories.
She thought of Little Wren and the note under the pillow. She thought of Clara’s courage. Eliza’s words. Ruthie’s fire. Tasha’s grit.
And she thought of her own.
What if I’m meant to be the bridge? Not just between time periods… but between people. Between systems and voices. Between the past and the possible future.
She didn’t know how, not yet. But she knew this: she would not be erased. And she wouldn’t let others be, either.
The portal hadn’t opened again yet. But Wren didn’t mind. Maybe this time, she’d build one.
End of Part One: The Spark
The portal didn’t open again that night.
It didn’t need to.
Wren lay on her back, Cat purring on her chest, and stared at the ceiling as if it were a canvas. She had stories now—ones history never told quite right. She had questions to keep asking, and maybe even some answers to give.
She whispered to the stars outside her window:
“We’ve always existed. Now we begin to be seen.”
Somewhere in the future, a ripple started.
And Wren—neurodivergent, brilliant, imperfect Wren—was ready to make waves.
✨ End of Part One: The Threads We Carry
📣 Coming Soon: Part Two – The Reckoning and the Rise
Wren has seen what happens when stories are erased—and what happens when people carry them forward anyway. In Part Two, she’ll face resistance from those trying to rewrite history, glimpse possible futures, and begin creating a movement of her own.
💬 What part of Wren’s journey spoke to you?
Would you time travel if you could? Have you ever felt like the world wasn’t made for your kind of brain? Drop a comment, share this story, or just sit with it. Your voice matters. You always have.
Yes!! Thank you so much!
good for you! we should be able to disagree without bringing opinions about each other’s bodies into it!
Thank you for your feedback. I greatly appreciate it.
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Salt-N-Pepa were yelling truth through my headphones when this essay started writing itself in my head.
“If I wanna take a guy home with me tonight, it’s none of your business!”
I wasn’t just listening—I was lip-syncing, stomping around my home like a woman possessed. That song doesn’t ask for permission. It doesn’t play nice. It kicks down the door and makes space for a woman to say, I belong to no one but me.
And as I sang those words loud enough for the neighbors to hear, I realized: this is it. This is the whole damn point.
Women get practically nothing in this world—not full safety, not full respect, not equal rights. But if we don’t even get our own bodies? Then what do we have left?
I’m not totally hopeless. I wish I could say I believe the patriarchy will collapse in my lifetime, but I don’t know. Maybe it will—and if it does, I’ll probably cry and pee myself out of pure joy. But until then, I want to be crystal clear about one thing:
A woman’s body belongs to her. No one else.
Let me say it louder: I’m a grown-ass woman, and what I do with my body is none of your fucking business.
Objectified at Birth
From the moment we’re born, people start telling us who we are based on how we look.
“She’s so pretty.” “Look at those eyelashes!” “You’ve got a little heartbreaker on your hands!”
Compliments before we can walk, before we can speak—and they’re always about our appearance. Pretty. Cute. Beautiful.
Have you ever heard someone walk up to a baby boy and say, “He’s so handsome, he’s gonna break hearts”? Not really. Boys are strong. Boys are tough. Boys are smart. Girls are pretty.
And so it begins—this quiet but constant training that tells us our worth lives on the outside. That we are here to be looked at. That our bodies are not just our own, but for others to comment on, rate, touch, control.
By the time we’re old enough to notice, it’s everywhere. Dress codes. Street harassment. Politicians making choices about our reproductive rights. Our bodies have been claimed by everyone but us.
And that is terrifying. That is infuriating.
Silenced in Real Life
It’s not just politics. It’s not just headlines. It’s in my friend groups. Especially with my guy friends.
I try to speak—talked over. Try to share—told to shut the fuck up. Try to exist—mocked, ignored, laughed at.
And when I yell—because sometimes that’s the only way to be heard—I’m called dramatic. Crazy. “Too much.”
What am I even doing there, then? What’s the point of friendship if I’m just background noise?
I try to explain patriarchy. I try to talk about gender and fairness and equity. But I’m treated like I’m making it all up. Like I’m the problem. Like I’m speaking a language they’ve already decided not to understand.
It’s isolating. It’s exhausting. It’s one of the reasons I’ve wanted to die.
Not the only reason—but a big one. Because when the world constantly erases you, it’s hard to feel like you matter. Like you belong.
And then there’s the confusion. Am I here to be pretty or respected? Do I have to choose?
Add autism to the mix—undiagnosed until 32—and people still act like they know me better than I know myself. “You don’t seem autistic.” “Are you sure?” Yes. I’m fucking sure. I’ve spent years untangling this. I’m still learning. We all are. But people don’t even try.
And still—here I am. Saying it out loud anyway.
The Power They Can’t Take
For everything this world tries to strip from us—our voices, our safety, our sanity—it still hasn’t found a way to take the one thing that lives deep in our bones: our power.
It’s not the kind of power written into law. It’s older than that. Wilder. Quieter. Unshakeable.
And I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
If reincarnation is real, I’d come back as a woman again. Every time.
Because even though this world tries to make it seem like being a woman is a disadvantage, there’s something we carry that can’t be touched. A generational fire. A knowing. A legacy.
I think of all the women who weren’t allowed to speak. Who weren’t allowed to choose. Who weren’t allowed to dream—and still, somehow, they survived.
They fought. They wrote. They whispered truths. They lit the path. And now I’m here—pissed off, alive, and writing this.
Sometimes I think about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and it all clicks. She holds the power of every girl before her. She fights because they fought. That’s what womanhood is to me.
Yes, I’m tired. Yes, I’m angry. But I am not alone.
Hope That’s Bigger Than Us
I don’t know if I’ll live to see the day women have full autonomy. But I hope someone does.
I hope some girl grows up in a world where her voice is not just tolerated, but expected. Where she doesn’t have to choose between being pretty and being respected. Where her body is hers and hers alone.
Where no one tells her she’s “too much” for daring to take up space.
Where she’s free to be loud. To be weird. To be whole.
That world may feel far away. But hope is power, too.
Sometimes it’s just the decision to keep going. To write. To scream. To speak anyway.
Because even if they don’t listen— We’re still here.
And I’ll keep blasting Salt-N-Pepa, stomping through my house, saying it as loud as I need to:
“It’s none of your business.”
My body. My rules. My life.
Try and take that from me—and see how loud I can be.
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