On 'Growing Up'
1/9/2022: On 'Growing Up', New Year!, The Other Black Girl, TJs Raviolis & ...
Sometimes I imagine that I’m 11 years old again.
There’s this one memory in particular. I’m with my childhood best friend, Hannah. It’s a sweltering summer day in the San Fernando Valley. We jump into my freezing pool, splashing around recklessly. We get out to eat powdered donettes that my mom brings out on a purple, plastic plate. We jump on the trampoline with tangled, wet hair and lose track of the hours as the sun dips in the backyard. We don’t realize that it’s gotten dark when my dad calls us in for dinner.
That feeling – feral and free – is a hard one to summon back as we age, especially in 2022. With the lingering threats of a national pandemic and the rising doom of climate change, even teens are consumed by the sharp awareness that has come barreling into all of our lives over the past two years. I spent some time with my boyfriend’s teenage sister over Christmas and she seemed to carry burdens that I did not at that age – far more cautious than I’d ever been as a teen.
While I’m only 25, being a teenager feels like a different life. I ate chicken tenders for lunch and walked home from friends’ houses in the dark. I drank sweet liquids from red solo cups that I’d left on tables and woke up lazily at noon.
As women grow out of girlhood and into adulthood, our bodies are often the first things that betray us, propelling us into the confusing and dark years that follow youth. I remember the first time that my bare legs elicited whistles from a stranger’s car window as I walked to school. My feet involuntarily sped up, my heart began to thump in my chest.
For many women, transitioning out of girlhood begins with this feeling that our bodies are no longer our own. Once the world sees you as an object, darkness and danger sharpen into focus – the threat of sexual violence, the impure motives of others, the need to protect yourself. No matter how it begins, this is the essence of growing up for everyone – being pulled outside of the warmth and safety of childhood into a place that is filled with uncertainty. But I think that the way in which the world teaches us to deal with the uncertainty and darkness that come as we leave childhood do us all a deep disservice.
In western culture, ‘growing up’ is synonymous with admonishing our childlike spirits and replacing them with ‘adult’ sensibilities – repression, denial, and numbing ourselves to emotions we once felt with bracing intensity. Perhaps we do this to protect ourselves from the intense truths and emotions that come with aging, but what are we exchanging for this supposed control and civility?
Since my mom passed away, I never feel quite my age anymore. In my grief I’m in touch with so many versions of myself – 13, 14, 15 year old ‘Becca’ lingering right underneath my surface. Many days I feel six years old again – curled up in a fetal position in bed, just wanting my mom to take the pain away. Lots of days I’m in touch with twelve year old Becca – a mess of pink braces and knotty hair and insecurity. Even though I’m 25 and time keeps moving, I think I’ll always be stuck at 23 – the year that my mom died and I graduated college and I fell in love and ‘growing up’ was pushed into rapid-fire motion.
I think that tough times can push people back into past versions of themselves and often we are quick to judge this. My mom let herself regress into younger ages and past versions of herself, especially in her last years when she was fighting for her life. People dismissed her as foolish or incompetent or naive, but it was in this child-like state of hers that I’d often find her truest spirit.
At her funeral I talked about one of my favorite memories I have with her – It was November of 2018. We were baking cookies for a friendsgiving. We ran giddily around our light-filled kitchen with spoons of raw cookie dough like we were 10 year old girls at our first slumber party. We threw handfuls of colorful candy into plastic bowls, the low buzz of the electric mixer just audible under our roaring delight. I remember how my insides were sore from laughter.
I’ve noticed over the past year that even though I often feel incompetent or “wrong” for letting myself slip into past versions of myself, it also brings back a certain whimsy and freedom that I don’t think I’ve felt as often since I was actually a little girl.
Last night, Morgan and I lay in my bed with all of the lights off. He did funny accents and I made silly faces. We giggled like little kids who don’t have the self awareness to hold back. I woke up with my insides sore from the laughter, the way I did when I was a little kid and thought, maybe we don’t have to grow up all at once.
Media Recs –
The Other Black Girl – A truly innovative book that I just read over break. A story of the only black girl at a very white publishing house. It takes an unexpected turn and subverts genre big time.
This Ringer piece on the season finale of Michelle’s Bachelorette Season – just YES. Jodi Walker always makes me laugh.
Trader Hoes –
Going to TJs tonight, so I’ll have more recs next week, but for today I’ll leave you with these delightful, easy spinach & ricotta raviolis that I used to eat as a kid.
Happy 2022! If you’re liking this newsletter, please send it around to your pals! See y’all next Sunday.
Yes. Stay silly. Have fun whenever possible. “Laughing and crying, it’s the same release.”