To the girl in high school or middle school or wherever being called the “good girl”:

You don’t know me, but I know you.

I was you.

I am you.

The first time I was labeled as the “good girl,” I was 14 years old and starting my new life away from home at boarding school. Home to me was a small North Carolina town where I was just like every other girl and boy. When I arrived in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., I suddenly became the “good girl”.

I immediately realized there was a huge gap between me and everyone else. I didn’t cuss, I didn’t drink, I didn’t sneak out, I didn’t kiss boys. I didn’t do those things because in my town, no one my age did that. It wasn’t because I thought I was so much better than the rest of them, it just wasn’t the culture in which I grew up in. But, to them, I had put myself on some pedestal and revenge was to call me the “good girl”.

And I hated it.

Before then, I had never been labeled. I didn’t even know what being a “good girl” meant, I just knew that I was one. From then on, I wasn’t invited to certain things or to hang out with certain people because “I didn’t belong” or because “I wouldn’t do that.” And it broke my heart. I didn’t understand how me being myself separated myself from everyone else. All I wanted was to fit in.

So I started changing. I started changing who I was and rejecting everything I had ever known because I wanted to fit in. I wanted to be “cool”. And I judged “coolness” through other people’s definitions. I became embarrassed to say when I had never done something or when I had no idea of what people were talking about. I stopped listening to country music and started attempting to like rap and other types of music that were “cool”. I stopped wearing my own clothes and would borrow my friends clothes that were from labels that were “in”.

And yet, after all of this. I still didn’t feel like I fit in. I still hated myself. I was now embarrassed that I had tried so hard to fit in and in the process, completely lost myself. I found myself depressed, anxious, and friendless. I was hundreds of miles away from home and alone. It was one of the darkest times of my life.

And then I found them.

I found my group of friends who were all somewhat weird and all friendless. We all became friends because we had no one else to become friends with. And let me just say, it was the weirdest combination of personalities anyone had ever seen. We became the “odd squad”. We were all free to be our whole, true selves and the others loved us for it. I was able to be my “good girl” self, and they still loved me. They still joked with me when I asked what something meant or when I had never heard a song before, but they never tried to change me.

So to all you girls who have been branded “good girls”... it's not a bad thing. As much as you might want to get rid of it now, don’t. There is nothing wrong with growing up slow. There is nothing wrong with not divulging into all the whispers society whispers in your ear.

Be yourself. Be good.

Everyone hates labels, that’s a fact. It might feel like the biggest insult now, but it isn’t. At all. Honestly, I have found it to be a blessing. If I had tricked myself into thinking that fake girl I was at 14 was my true self, I would have never found my best friends. If I had given in to the pressures that were pressed upon me, I would have made decisions I regret.

So don’t give in. Being a “good girl” does not mean you are better or worse than everyone. It means that you are stronger than the pressures society will push in your face.