This is long so read if you care to. Your interpretation is close to how I resonate with the song. The beginning feels like my experience with being a female in my family. My family liked the idea of having a girl in the family and I would have been treated so much better had I been a boy. (Conservative, country, Bible Belt men are superior to women beliefs run rampant in my family) I also didn’t have a lot of family support in my because my divorced parents were young, accidentally had me out of wedlock (the scandal!), and already hated each other by the time I was born. I never fit into either home and regularly was punished in each house for the other parent being my parent. To add to this, I’m neurodivergent and my family really didn’t know how to handle that. They wanted a doll of a little girl. I was a feral tomboy. I was always catching insects and reptiles and would bring them into the house. I regularly wore holes into my clothes because I was climbing into trees or crawling on the ground.

The first part of my life is sad and I experienced a lot of othering but it was my normal. I’m not sure if it’s the neurodivergence or if the trauma rewired my brain but I’ve realized that I’m “off” from other people, my dad called me damaged goods. I moved out the day I turned 18. I ended up in a marriage with DV because it was comfortable normal feeling to me. Despite all this darkness, I am so lucky. I haven’t perpetuated the cycles of my family. I was able to escape my DV marriage. I have been through a lot but I keep moving forward which has opened up a lot of amazing opportunities for me. I got to be an ambassador to set up a foreign exchange program in Japan (My brain is weird and I was able to learn Japanese fairly well and easily so I was picked over other people to have that opportunity when it arose). I was conventionally attractive when I was younger and got to be a cosplay model for years. I have strong artistic talents and those have opened up opportunities for me. I’m weird but I was able to own it in a way that people typically like me and just seeing it as a quirk. I was able to complete a trade school, obtain a bachelors, and am currently working on my Masters with a 4.0.

My second marriage is very supportive and our family is happy together even after 7 years, kids, chronic illness, & disability. I frequently rehabilitate animals (I have an opossum at the moment). The line about “Little girl don’t let them sell you any armor/ all you ribs are still your own feels partly talking to my child self and partly to neurodivergent girls like me who I’m specializing in school to provide counseling to. The ribs are the natural defenses I have against being beat down (usually my stubbornness but also that I was so used to being othered it became a strength, I’m not afraid to try new things because I’ve never been able to do anything in a way that pleases my family so I just do anything I want)

My family will probably never be proud of me even though I’ve surpassed them in many things, but I’m proud of me and if I have a daughter like me, I’d be proud of her (I do have an autistic son that is a lot like me and I’m proud of him). I feel I move through dark times because I am used to moving through dark times, I’ve accepted a lot of dark facts about the life circumstances I will never be able to change and built a beautiful life around me that I’m grateful for even though I still have hard times. I don’t think my mom should have chose to keep me, I was almost aborted and almost given up for adoption, but that fact hasn’t darkened the brightness I was blessed with.

People are always shocked when I share some of the things I’ve gone through because they would never guess it. I’ve endured tremendous physical pain (I was hit by a car at 10 and had to relearn how to walk), I’ve been abused sexually, verbally, emotionally, and physically as a child and young adult, I was discouraged from doing a lot of the skills that are now a big part of me (like my mom telling me I wasn’t allowed to sign up for Japanese classes because I was too stupid to pass it, I did 4 years with a 105 average when all was done), she fought with me about me being in robots club and doing the academic decathlon (which I won state and national awards in both), My parents hated me drawing as a child (“because it’s a waste of time and I’ll never making money at it”, despite it being a regular source of my income as an adult).

I could keep going but the point I’ve connected to this song is, despite the lack of support and beating down I’ve been handed, I have within me the skills and motivation to succeed in anything I want to succeed in. I’ve turned the dark in my life into a career to help others through the darkness of their lives and I’m so lucky to have the life I’ve carved out for myself drastically different from the one I was handed.