|5 minute read|
Being a girl is being everything. Barefoot on the pavement, alone in bed. Dressing up and dressing down. I couldn’t find a rhythm to these words, but it is everything I have been feeling. I’m not speaking on behalf, but speaking of experience. Vignettes to encapsulate the scattered thoughts I have had, because as of late, navigating from girlhood to womanhood feels as if it will never end. I’m beginning to think they’re the same in many ways. A woman turned inside out is just the girl that she was.
One day broken, the next day fixed. Careful touching our face, wiping tears away fast. To be a girl is to be complex. The sun as our lover. Skipping drinks for ice water. Chewing the end of the straw, chewing on blue bubblegum. Solid armor melted away, bellies up. Vulnerable. Soft. Foreign. Skin to skin. Heart to heart. To be a girl is to still be understood. The search for compassion. “Here I am, and all that comes with me!” With your heart on your sleeve, with your dreams in your palms, and your sentiments draped on your shoulders, we stand still. A goddess of our own making, create your future, create an abundant mind. Attention turned inwards, what goes on inside of there?
Taking care of the garden in your head. The femininity of a day full of self care. Running warm bath water, letting it trickle down your toes. Lighting candles, swelling the room with light, dim enough to be mysterious, not enough to be exposed. No rush to moisturize, cool lotion sinking into your skin, grateful for the body that you carry, the body and blood of woman. Laying down and doing nothing, enjoying the stillness. To be a girl is to slow down. Rejecting the fast pace of the world at times, indulging in leisure, refreshing our internal rhythm, the beat of a woman.
To be a girl is to grasp onto love wherever you can get it, even if the love is being shared, even if the love hurts. Biting the hand that feeds you, scraps under the table. Dogs, dogs, dogs. Cherry wine on a slip dress. Silk to kiss your skin. On edge and in love with love, we dance the waltz to perform our way in. Parading around to be sought out. Sometimes the last person we find is ourselves. Locking eyes for attention. Hand in hand, cheek to cheek. Pearl necklace shattered on the floor, slipping on beads. To look a fool, uneasy footing. Biting our own hands, scraps of us we threw away.
My glass of wine and my salad warm on the tile floor, a roofie an hour ago. A shirt to never be worn again. Because to him, I was just a girl. Skin and bones he was entitled to. Tricks up his sleeve to get what he wants. Months later I told another boy this story. How horrible it must have been! Such an awful thing! Empty statements of empathy because he is just a boy. It isn’t dangerous for him to have fun. Or be by himself. Or walk home at night. Or get gas at 10pm. Repeat offenders. Dogs, dogs, dogs. To be a girl is to still wake up the next morning; stomach empty, but eyes bright. Fool me once, never again.
The reckless, wild girl. Not lady-like in etiquette but in her strength. To do something just for fun. But fun is thought to be a waste of time in a production-driven society. Yet girlhood is fostered in fun. Crouched together in the girls bathroom, sharing giggles and a drag. Asking strangers for a tampon, or an out-of-context opinion. Swinging our purses, hand in hand. Walking home at night, together, because they can’t take all of us. Smudged mascara and no lipgloss left, the real fear is of the girls. Power in numbers, a body rooted in courage. Certain things can’t be taken away.
Selling out, selling us. Viral, must-have, go-to, trendy, sexy, cool. Look ageless with this new moisturizer! Want your mascara to last all day? Cellulite got you down? Looking to lose extra belly fat? New day, same story. Clusters of nonsense thrown in the face. To sell to a girl, is to sell the girl. To fit the role imagined for us. Tricks up their sleeve to inflict what they want. Benefiting anyone but those that buy. Telling stories of insecurities as a profitable business, buy low to sell out.
“It’s all exhausting really” said to me on a saturday night. Four wicks burning. Too much of something but falling short of something else. When life is over saturated with wants and needs. Do we ever truly win? The girl, the woman, as a blank canvas. A chance for us to be of our own creation, but sometimes not getting to guide the hand that does the painting. Erasing and starting over. But there is no need, for we are always a collection of our own journey. Begin again, end again. The good and the ugly. We hold the wisdom of our past and the shape of the future.
To be a girl is to always be growing up. Learning to wash your face, take care of a pet, tie your shoes, zip your own dress. Because every experience is learned, harnessing wisdom, which can never be touched, never taken away. Knowledge to be passed onto other little girls with teary eyes or a gapped-tooth smile. Collecting jewelry and $2 bills, boxes of old things in closets and attics, things too precious to throw away. Conditioner before shampoo. Buying tops in every color. Don’t be afraid to do what you want, and don’t care what people have to say. I learned this all from my mother, and she learned it from hers. Girlhood as history, like mother like daughter. This intelligence as an heirloom, the ways of growing into yourself as the lineage of every girl who came before.
Summer flesh. Popsicles in the heat. Sea shells in my pockets, because I couldn’t bear to pick which ones to leave. To be a girl is to find beauty in anything. What is around us is a gift. Noticing something worthy enough to snap a picture. Collecting in an album. Baby pictures, framed with friends. To be a girl is to enjoy everything as a delicacy.
Long distance calls, late night laughs. Political talk over chocolate ice cream. Our bodies as politics. A second to be serious and a second to be silly. The dichotomy of a girl, the chance to be everything. One day we have a choice and the next we don’t. Living in uncertainty. To be a girl is to be headstrong. Clawing our way through one day and dancing through the next. To be a girl is to feel everything, love everything, hate everything. To be a girl is to feel the pressure, but still succeed. To be a girl is to be helpless and hopeful, sincere and smart, dramatic and determined. No one definition to suffice. The center of the world is woman. To be a girl is to be.
let's just be girls together,
natalie <3
