weird girl diaries

hey get off the internet, I need to use the phone.

Sixteen-year-old me was a force to be reckoned with. A product of her time, she was an emo kid to her very core. Her black box dyed hair was styled in a deep side part and side bangs, with stripey lavender highlight, of course. She spent her time holed up in her lime green bedroom, picking out the perfect song for her Myspace page, taking selfies with duck lips and her fingers in a peace sign, and waiting for her friends to come online on AIM.

She would sneak out at night, hopping into the backseat of her friend’s cars parked down the block, smoking out the window (a cigarette or a joint, depending on the night). She would make friends with anyone, pretty much anywhere, and had no problem speaking up or trying new things.

She was gutsy, angry, dramatic, and one hundred percent herself.

She was brave (also sometimes she was very stupid), and somewhere along the way, over the next decade, she got a little lost.

Slowly, she let go of the heavy eyeliner and covered the tattoos with cardigans and blazers; she spoke softer and a little more timidly. She started getting anxious when there were crowds of people around, and froze up when she didn’t know what to say next.

She ~ became me ~ and I was a twenty-something woman with a big girl job and a mortgage and a husband, and I was completely lost.

What is it about society that makes us, especially women, feel the need to shrink ourselves to fit into its confines? That allows us to follow trends and traditions that may seem outlandish to some, but balks and original self-expression?

Now, sixteen-year-old me was a trend follower of the time in kind, but she was also creative, original, and so bold. I’m not sure that there was a day, a singular moment even, when that boldness began to fade. It happened slowly, over years of rise-and-grinding and of taking others' opinions to heart.

What would she think of the monotony of her future day-to-day life? Some lessons she needed to learn, I learned, of course. And there is the ever pressing issue of bills and responsibilities, yes. But there is something in that sixteen-year-old girl that I am determined, as I turn a new leaf in my life, to carry with me.

Thirty turned a new leaf for me, personally and professionally. I quit a job I hated, started therapy, got into an exercise routine, and started looking towards a future that would make both iterations, sixteen and thirty, of myself happy. Hopefully fourty and fifty-year-old me will like it too.

What is it about adulthood that makes bravery so much scarier than it was as a teen?

I started to force grown-up me to fumble through conversations and activities that teenage me would have leapt at, and while social anxiety is an ever-present issue, I truly feel better after those moments of getting out of my comfort zone.

Audition for the thing. Apply for the Job. Submit the Poem, the Essay, the Manuscript. Reach out for community. Invite the People Over. Wear the Dress, the Heels, the Lipstick in that Color.

As I turn thirty-three, I reflect on the first few years of this new decade of my life, and while there have been major fumbles and plenty of uncomfortable moments, that’s all they have been, just moments. They have passed, and the self-confidence, the bravery, and the joy have all stayed. And for that, I think sixteen-year-old me would be proud.