#*rp

…she is wit wrapped in warmth, sharp-edged when she needs to survive, and impossibly alive even in the middle of disaster. the kind of girl who can take heartbreak, chaos, and all the ugly parts of living and turn them into something almost beautiful simply because she refuses to let the world swallow her whole.

beneath all the laughter and easy charm, though, allie is still someone in the middle of becoming. constantly recalibrating. quietly searching for who she is when no one is watching, needing, expecting. when there’s no script in her hands and no role left to play. she has never fit neatly into the shapes people try to give her. instead, she resists them, rewrites them, stumbles through them with bruised grace until they begin to feel like something she chose for herself. so maybe that’s what this chapter of her life really is: a slow unlearning. a realization that she does not have to keep shrinking into the version of herself that makes everyone else comfortable.

now for the first time in a long time, allie hayes is beginning to wonder what it would mean to choose herself first and not apologize for it.” —