Log with Liv

To be a girl is to be pitted against the clock. It is wincing at each tick of the minute hand, grasping at the time tumbling from your clutch. Time slips away, an old friend gone on to bigger and better things, whilst we decide if it is worth it to grieve. Time disappears in between slumber parties and school dances. It escapes as you laugh with your best friend and each morning as you take extra care to do your makeup for the day. When time runs out, girlhood will come to a horrible, shocking end. Maybe I’m being dramatic, but the only thing we can hope to do is enjoy ourselves while it lasts. 

(After all, dramatic is what a teenage girl does best.)

Being a young girl means being reckless because you know there’s only so much time before conformity is beaten into you and the weight of societal norms becomes too heavy to shoulder. It means running out the time before the weight buries you. 

I have four clocks in my bedroom. It’s important to know the time, I think. (It’s important to know the time I have left.)

Reality will set in soon. We just escaped being Daughters. Soon enough we will become Mothers. Wives. Another’s. Our existence will be defined by the lives of those deemed More Important. We will step into our place as the fairer sex, the half fated for silver. Second-best, second-class. For now, though, while our lives remain ours, we’ll paint our nails, buy overpriced clothes, fall in love too easily, break hearts too freely. For now, we are unbound. 

(Our future is one of clipped wings and held tongues.)

Let’s be clear—the world hates teenage girls. Women ridicule us (we remind them that they must grieve the carefree joy they felt as girls). Men belittle, objectify, mock, and prey upon us. Teenage girls hate other teenage girls. Most girls hate themselves, too. This hate has erected a unique barrier of stereotypes around every young girl. Ironically, these stereotypes function as a source of freedom far more than they constrain young women. As girls, we can choose to exist within the stereotypes or live outside of them. Either I conform to their stereotypes and they taunt me for being emotional, girly, and obnoxious, or I fall outside of the ‘norm’ and they belittle my convictions and scowl at the audacity of today’s youth. I lose both ways. In this, I am awarded the liberty to be whoever I want to because I will, as a principle, be derided no matter who I choose to be. Society refuses to let young women have, enjoy, or complain about anything. Through their persistent mockery and contempt, they have inadvertently freed female youth of any obligation.

(Thank you for hating my happiness.)

With this accidental gift of freedom, my actions are directed by the persistent drum of desire in my chest. The desire to be, to live, to experience, to love. Girlhood is the only way I know how to be alive. I can exist and change and grow all under stereotypes’ judgemental cloud cover. They say we are superficial. Then let me admire myself in the mirror then and giggle while trying on clothes. Teenage girls are gossips, right? Fine, I’ll whisper to a friend in the corner of the room, eyes darting around while our mouths threaten to betray us with a grin. We’re mean. So what? You spoke this nasty behavior into existence. I will be mean, and loud, and overly confident. I will take up space because I know all you want is for me to be small. I will fight for what I want. I will have an ego. I will be big and I will be heard. After all, girlhood is the last chance I’ll ever have to unapologetically exist in a place not meant for me.

(All the women I know say sorry too much.)

Girlhood, in its entirety, is emotions left to run wild to unexplored extremes. In one desolate corner sits Anger, seething. Girlhood is for the angry. I fear womanhood may be for the sad (anger left to fester breeds grief and regret). This anger is inconsolable. Some days it is unrecognizable (both the girl wielding the anger and the anger itself).

(There is too much to be angry about.)

My favorite part of girlhood? Girls are the only people who do not fear feeling. Everything we feel is heightened. Exaggerated. We have not learned yet to be weary of heartbreak. We are generous with love and emotion. We have not yet learned to guard our hearts, or even more so, guard our tongues. To be a girl is to be, feel, and exist unashamed. After all, shame is taught, or rather shoved down our throats, to girls by women. Girls are uniquely invincible in matters of love and feeling.

(After all, we have our entire lives to mend broken hearts.)

For a short while, we are untouchable. For a moment, immortal. We will be preserved in childhood memories, first loves, first times, and last times. We will exist, forever young, in the memories of each other. We are reborn, our immortal existence ensured as each twinge of nostalgia reminds us of the girls we used to be. Of the way we once lived, free. Remembering may not be able to liberate me from the inherent bonds of womanhood, but reminiscence will keep me alive. Memories will sustain me. 

(I beg you to remember.)