“Maybe all the stumbling through and making mistakes and feeling bad about myself for so long had been for a reason. Maybe being a late bloomer wasn’t an accident. Maybe it was the point. I was a late bloomer because I had struggled to make sense of who I was and how I was meant to move through the world, but now that I’m here, and living out my late bloomerdom in all its glory, I can finally have empathy for the person I’d fought so hard not to be—and appreciate her, deeply. I used to worry so much about how I had “missed the memo” or wasn’t doing things at the same time as everyone else, but now I see that it was only because I had had those experiences that I’m able to be happy and fulfilled. It”