A Love Letter to Women

This isn’t a love letter in the traditional sense. There are no roses pressed between pages, I didn’t spray my cologne on the pages, no grand confessions, no single addressee. It’s more like a quiet acknowledgment, written in the margins of my life, for the ways women have shaped who I am without necessarily meaning to.

For a long time, I thought I figured things out on my own. That I woke up one day comfortable on highways, with a taste for certain music, a habit of reading before bed, a version of myself that felt earned and self-made. But when I trace those things back far enough, I keep finding women at the beginning of the story.

I didn’t get comfortable driving on highways because I was brave or adventurous. I got comfortable because I wanted to see a girl who lived far enough away that back roads weren’t an option. I remember gripping the steering wheel, heart pounding, convincing myself that missing an exit would be worse than staying home. I stayed on the highway because the alternative was not showing up. Somewhere along the way, fear gave up. Now I drive without thinking about it, unaware most days that my confidence was jump-started by the possibility of her smile.

The music I love came to me the same way. It wasn’t a discovery; it was an inheritance. A girl I once talked to played this kind of it constantly. I learned the artists so I could keep up, so I could say, “Oh yeah, I like them too,” and mean it enough, so that when she asked if I wanted to go to a concert, that I would say Yes! (and side note, it was a sick concert) Years later, we don’t talk at all, maybe a Happy birthday or a swipe on an insta story every few months but the music stayed. It followed me through different apartments, different phases, different versions of myself. Sometimes a song comes on and I don’t think of her at all. Sometimes I do. Either way, the sound feels like home now.

Reading entered my life out of the same quiet desire: to be understood, or at least adjacent to someone who understood things deeply. A girl I crushed on hard, loved books, spoke about them with a kind of reverence. I started reading more so I could participate, so I could meet her in that space. What began as an act of trying to gather proximity turned into a habit, then a refuge. I still remember the last book she recommended, and its next on my list and man, to feel and to realize that words could rearrange you.

There are other things, too. Ways I speak. Ways I listen. Ways I think about art, about vulnerability, about being wrong and surviving it. None of these lessons were delivered formally. No one sat me down and said, “Here is how you grow.” They were absorbed through proximity, through care, through wanting to be better because someone made better feel possible.

This isn’t about romanticizing women as muses or milestones. It’s about recognizing influence without ownership. These women didn’t exist to shape me. They were simply being themselves. I was the one paying attention, borrowing courage, curiosity, softness, and carrying it forward.

So this is my thank you. To the women who never knew they taught me something. To the ones I no longer speak to but still walk beside me in small, invisible ways. To the conversations, the car rides, the playlists, the dog-eared pages.

I am not who I am despite you.
I am who I am because I noticed you.