Maybe everything stems from the fact I am a thought daughter

In 2024 there was one question surrounding the internet: gay son or thot daughter? The homophobic and misogynistic question evolved into something widely different: the thought daughter. A simple worldplay turned into something much more insightful. The TikTok video below explains the concept very well, but I think the best explanation of this comes from Dr. Nicolle Pacifico's interview with Parents:

“These girls tend to be deeply feeling, conscientious, and caring. They over-analyze every situation and may find themselves wondering whether they said something wrong, did something wrong, or their friends really like them.”

A couple weeks ago I told my best friend, "Maybe everything stems from the fact I am a thought daughter."

Some nights, I will be alone at my dorm, feeling a little blue. Not because anything sad happened but because this is the feeling I usually experience when it is past 9pm on a Friday night.

I go to the bathroom and see girls getting ready to go out, and I become upset. I feel a sense of loneliness.

But yet, it's a nuanced feeling of loneliness... I desire to feel the sense of belonging and girlhood of getting ready to go out with your girlfriends. And yet, what I am seeing as I walk to the bathroom in my dorm hall is probably not this entirely positive feeling I crave. I can imagine so many other stories that these girls might be living. Maybe they are actually feeling this abundance of connectedness and belonging. But also... maybe the group of girls I see giggling in the hallway are experiencing something else. Maybe one girl is currently upset their crush hasn't texted them back, while another is trying to forget about their bad test grade, or another is trying to run away from her homesickness.

I know it is unlikely that everyone else is experiencing the best time of their lives while I am in my dorm, when the only thing I'm getting ready for is bed.

I know I wouldn't want to go out and party anyway, especially not without my best friends, miles away from here.

But in the end, I still crave that feeling. My neuroscience of well-being class defined loneliness as "the gap between the connections we want vs. what we experience." And I guess that's what I'm feeling. A gap. And the group of girls, giddy and excited, walking past me, are just another reminder of that gap.

In the end, all I truly want is to close the gap. And I know that. And yet, knowing I want that is not the same as having it. That is the paradox of the thought daughter. The thought daughter thinks about all her problems and yet does not do anything about them.

But who would I be if I wasn't, on a Friday night, longing for human connection? I wouldn't be me. I wouldn't be the girl who reaches out to others to hang out or the girl who sends handwritten letters to the people she loves, nor would I be the girl who cares deeply about those around her.

As I feel the pain of loneliness, I know I would much rather feel this pain than be surrounded by drunk friends who barely know me.