dear diary,
It is the end of my Saturn’s Return. I’m teetering on the edge of my twenties and staring into the dark abyss of my thirties. No, wait, the abyss isn’t just my thirties. There are other decades there too. Oh God look at all of them down there it’s quite the image. There are so many decades to come, and there are absolutely no rules for how you spend them. Here they are a huge, open-ended chasm that’s waiting to swallow you whole if you don’t reread The Bell Jar and commit the fig tree passage to memory. The end of my twenties is suddenly feeling a lot like high school graduation. You know that last week of class where you’re walking through the halls and everything looks small. Anxiety-laced classrooms are suddenly zapped of their power. You can’t be touched by the threats of childhood anymore, you’re gone! That is…until…you are approached by the concept of eternal Girl.
Okay, yes, you know what a girl is… but have you considered being one eternally? Have you seen the bow-shaped altars that we worship at, and would you like a punch card? Your tenth Girl Dinner gets you a free monogrammed tote bag, and that’s just good Girl Math. If you’re 23 years old, you’re actually just a 23-year-old teenage Girl. If you fucked up at work, they can’t fire you because you’re actually just a Girl! Something is enticing about this extended adolescence, but it also begs a darker question. Why are we so afraid to be women, and how long can we keep up the mystical act of Girlhood? Both options are impossible tasks that nobody could ever hope to live up to, yet Girlhood feels like the ultimate performance. It is a magic trick. It is passed down by generations and spoken in sacred rooms, but it is also a sideshow to be gawked at. Girlhood contains secrets and anger and pure unbridled joy. This is the line it loves to walk, and the double-edged sword it loves to swallow. Womanhood is much sturdier than the smoke-and-mirrors of it’s younger counterpart. Women are virtuous and shouldered with quiet dignity. They do not need the silly incantations of the Girl.
Being a woman is hard-lined and concrete. It is waiting for the bus and running other people’s errands. There is nobody who asks the question ‘How does she do it all?’ in good faith. The question is rhetorical and the woman is simply expected to do. I’ve been afraid of the day that I stop feeling like a young adult and start feeling like a regular one for this very reason. Have I done enough with my twenties? Am I planning for the future? When will I start feeling like a woman and stop feeling like a kid? Maybe childhood is something you let go of when you have a child of your own. This is an even more upsetting thought to me. To be a woman is to be a caretaker, and to be a girl is to be cared for.
So I’m thinking all of these things and I’m still staring into that abyss. That cavernous, echoing abyss that is waiting for me to pick something and punish me for it. I want so badly to never choose. Why must I become 30 when I am already 17 and 6? I consider the multitudes and I’m overwhelmed. My mother put it best over the dinner table the other night: The other versions of you are sitting by your side every day in this life. There isn’t some previous self you cast away, they stay with you and sometimes they demand the driver’s seat to say ‘I’m here’. I watch my mother talk about the feeling of being 15 and missing her mom and I see the girlhood emerge. Eternal girl. This time it doesn’t look like a magic trick. She wears hers like a flicker of light and lets the flame grow. I’ve seen her tend to it over the years. Sometimes it’s embers and sometimes it’s roaring but always she lets it burn.
To eating all the figs,
xo Julianna
Since becoming a mother I feel like I can see the little girl in me more clearly than I ever did before and through caring for my daughter I care for her, too. 🩷
I hope future generations can make womanhood as coveted as girlhood (and that ours is the start) 💌 excellent piece :)