The Only Girl in My Grade

Four months after I turned twelve,

our ward split.

Two wards became three,

which probably looked very tidy

on paper.

I landed in Third Ward.

And somehow,

in all that careful dividing,

I became the only girl

in my grade.

And stayed that way

for the rest of Young Women.

At girls camp,

this required a certain flexibility.

One year,

I belonged with the older girls.

Another,

the younger ones.

Every morning

I had to figure out

where my class had gathered

and make my way there alone.

It feels almost

too metaphorically convenient now.

But that is actually what happened.

I wandered until I found

where I was supposed to be.

Then I did it again

the next morning.

I don't think I understood then

what being perpetually between groups

was teaching me.

I only knew

that other girls seemed to have

a natural place to land.

I was usually joining

something already in progress.

So I adapted.

I became quieter.

More observant.

I learned to read a room

before stepping fully into it.

To notice

who already belonged together.

Where the spaces were.

When to speak.

When to wait.

Less willing, perhaps,

to risk the tiny humiliation

of discovering

that a circle

did not have room.

Some of that became part of me.

And some of it probably looked

very different from the outside

than it felt from within.

Quiet can look like indifference.

Hesitation can look like distance.

A girl can become very good

at occupying the edge of a room

and still care deeply

about everything happening inside it.

There are things

I would do differently now.

Of course there are.

But I am looking back

with years she did not have.

She was twelve.

Then thirteen.

Then fourteen.

She was not constructing

a philosophy of belonging.

She was adapting.

I don't remember those years

with anger.

I remember good people.

Good moments.

Plenty of laughter.

I don't want to rewrite any of it

into something darker

than it was.

But I understand myself

better because of it.

I understand why I watched first.

Why I sometimes held back.

Why belonging could feel

less like walking through a door

and more like studying the room

before deciding where to stand.

And maybe that is the part

I carried forward.

I notice things.

The person slightly outside the circle.

The pause before someone

joins a conversation.

The difference between being alone

and wanting to be alone.

I know better now

than to assume

they are the same.

I spent years

learning how to read a room.

I'm still observant.

I still watch first.

The difference is

I no longer assume

the room has already decided

where I belong.

Because sometimes

you don't find your place.

Sometimes,

slowly

and almost without noticing,

you make one.