In the deepest, most authentic part of my mind, I’m a girl.
I’m still restless, keen to play, quick to learn, and slow to apply. I still want to be with nature. I still want to colour and pretend. I still long to be cradled. My meltdowns still happen, but it’s the private, passive adult kind. I’m still clumsy, curious, and sensitive. At my least suppressed, I’m a girl co-existing within a woman taking care of me.
It wasn’t until my most recent years that I stopped referring to myself as a girl. One day I was describing someone I went to school with and began the sentence with “that girl in the year below,’ and quickly corrected myself with, ‘I mean that woman! She’s a woman now. We all are.’ I remember during the pandemic when we were going to vaccine centres in age groups and being surprised by how grown up everyone my age looked. As I stood in the queue and breathed through a mild existential crisis, I thought, how old do I look?
Thankfully, I’m not very bothered about looking older these days. I’m more moved by the bitter sweetness of passing time. There are definitely times where I wish things were more taut, less droopy, less wrinkly. But other times I look at my body and see how much I’ve lived. I look at the scar on my leg and remember scraping it on the coffee table when I was 17. I look at the mark on my arm and remember burning it on a lantern while playing with my cousins in Nigeria at 5 or 6. I look at my boobs and remember praying for them at 12 thinking they’d never come! All of these stories my body holds take me back to my inner child and make me feel so nostalgic.
Now I’m this woman with new scars, new quirks, new wishes. I trust this woman a lot because now she’s all I’ve got. Every time I’ve been faced with the most complex challenges, the greatest adversities, the biggest decisions, this woman has somehow pulled through. Every time I’ve said to myself, ‘I don’t know what to do, but I’ll figure it out,’ it’s the woman in me really saying, ‘don’t worry, I’ll take care of you.’ Even when I don’t fully trust myself on the surface, deep down, I know I’ve got this and there’s no better person to figure my shit out than me. I’m very thankful for that.
How is it possible to feel like a woman and a girl at the same time? I’m not sure. But I pride myself on nurturing a healthy and low-key symbiotic relationship between these parts of myself. I need this woman and I need this girl. Both parts of me help me create my best days. Both parts of me heal each other.
I hope that if I’m ever the mother of a girl, she can look back fondly at her own girlhood because she had a mother who understood how important it was to be a girl in peace. Because that’s all girlhood needs to be- peaceful. And I’m glad it’s not too late to give myself this peace. I hope you can too.
Thank you so much for reading. I can’t wait to speak to you again soon!
As my 30th approaches, I found myself looking in the mirror the other day having these exact same thoughts 🙏🏾 so thank you, this piece of writing really hit home and made me realise I also trust the woman looking back at me and happy for the little girl who can finally realise she’s an adult now and can provide her own peace 😌
Droopy? Wrinkly? Aren't you late 20s? I would say after I had a baby, I added to girl the second personality of woman. I will always be a girl at heart.