notes on being a girl

I feel like I’ve been stuck in the throes of writer’s block (and a touch of laziness) for the last month—I’ve been trying to write something that felt worth sharing everyday, and nothing felt right. Finally, this piece was somewhat of a breakthrough or a respite. I willed it out of me, mostly at the bar at Cafe Cluny (they have Chablis by the glass there) and I’m proud of it. I try to not let any unkind internet commentary get to me, but to be honest with you (as I’ll always try to be), someone commented ‘none of these sentences makes sense’ on a poem of mine, and it truly discouraged me. I don’t think poetry has to make sense to everyone, I don’t even think prose has to make sense to everyone—but I got so in my head about stringing words together the practice felt sticky for a little while. Then I wrote this. And I wrote like I always write—stream of consciousness, a little messy, a little poetic too. I like writing poetry because words can mean what you’d like them to mean, and you’re not stuck in the strict confines of grammar. I always know when I write something I like because of the feeling I get when I write the last sentence. This one felt like that. So even if it doesn’t make sense to you, it made sense to me. And I hope you feel called or heard or held too.

Xx.

**

My best friend and I are walking down the street having a casual conversation about consent. We just had a long lunch and I hadn’t really wanted it to end except every lunch has to end eventually. Life (unfortunately) cannot be one interminable weekend lunch with a female friend. She drank a coke zero and I had Chablis. We talked about Taylor Swift longer than most people could talk about anything else. On and on and on. Eventually the restaurant needed to clear the table and close. The waiter had to go home. Our time was up. That’s life, I guess. 

My best friend and I are sitting on the floor of my college bedroom watching a documentary about sexting. She’s nursing a broken heart, I have a water bottle tucked into my elbow. A bag of sour gummy candy is split open between us. I keep braiding and then unbraiding my hair. The documentary is kind of boring and we stare at the ceiling, send Snapchat messages and mostly sit in silence. But it's comfortable in the way getting home after vacation is—with you my life is a welcome relief. 

My best friend and I are driving down ocean avenue with iced coffees dripping condensation all over the cupholders. She turns the music up and I roll the windows down. She can’t sing but the comfort comes in knowing neither of us judge. With me she doesn’t have to even be herself, she can just be. Her company is like a family heirloom. I fear losing it. I want to pass it down to generations. I want to take good care of her. I want the world to take good care of us. But it won’t, so we step in for each other. 

My best friend and I are way too high at the movie theater. She has to pee and obviously I’ll go with her—no women left behind. She wants popcorn and m&ms, I want buncha crunch. She’s never tried buncha crunch before. The words sound funny in her mouth and we laugh and laugh and laugh about it. I’m shaking so hard washing my hands, full of glee, I can’t catch my breath. Our cheeks are flushed enough that other people notice. I feel like we look like a portrait of kid-like joy. We probably just look insane, but I can’t remember ever laughing that much before. What if we lived in the movie theatre. What if we stole the moment and kept it between us for life. 

My best friend and I are in a store looking at a row of neatly organized purses. She can’t decide if the one with the cherries stitched across the black leather is practical (it isn’t). I told her it wasn’t. Then I told her if it made her happy, she should have it. She totes it around the store and strikes poses in various mirrors. She smiles a toothy smile (she never does this). She takes a series of photos of it. We end up mutually agreeing she’d never carry it. But it was fun, for the afternoon, to just pretend. 

My best friend and I are getting ready for a party. I spray her with perfume and she wants to share my lip  gloss. She twirls and twirls and twirls around the room. Her hair whips around her like a cloud of smoke, framing her face. She is the prettiest person I know and I love her most. We’re having more fun getting ready than we will at the party and we both know this because this is what happens every time. But I like patterns, and we both don’t mind. 

My best friend and I are at Nordstrom Rack. We don’t need to buy anything, we just need something to do. We keep looking at these purple jeggings. They would’ve been great in 2010. She had a pair back then. And she wore them with platform sneakers. I’ve only known her at 22, 23, 24, 25. Never 12. Or 13 or 14. I am nostalgic for that version of her. When her teeth were crooked and she had her first kiss. We mock our teenage selves. Trapeze through the aisles. This is a good enough Saturday. Just us, and nothing but a slip of nostalgia, fleeting and hardly even ours.  

My best friend calls me while I’m about to cross the street and asks me to promise I’ll never tell a soul the secret she needs to tell. Of course I won’t. Her secret is safe with me. She is safe with me. I would do anything to make sure of that.  And I cross the street. 

My best friend calls me sobbing and I want to kill the person who made her cry. I never get angry. Nothing really brings it out of me. But when you hurt someone I love, I turn red. How could they not see her heart—right there, where she always keeps it, stitched into her sweater sleeve? How could they not see her mind, so bright that light beams shoot from her ears? How could they not see her–standing there, the closest thing to perfect anyone could get? I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. 

My best friend and I are at a table for two. It's always just a table for two. She’s telling me she slayed the Wordle this morning and I want to know more because I always do. We talk about our grandmas and we share the calamari and I try her cocktail and we both decide mine is better. We joke about the guys we used to kiss and the outfits we used to wear but secretly we’re mourning a version of us that had so little care about what we looked like or who we spent our time around. 

My best friend and I are upstairs while a party drones on below. I’m too drunk. We both show a lot of intentional skin. I kissed someone’s ex-boyfriend and now that girl is mad. Not at me, at him. I didn’t know the girl. It wasn’t my fault, but now I’m upstairs and we’re talking about Buffalo Wild Wings. We might go there. She remembers I’m allergic to gluten and she looks up an allergen friendly menu. It's 1 o’clock in the morning. But she cares. And I care. And we’ll both always care. 

My best friend and I sit at a table at a coffee shop and talk about everything we want to do with our lives. We laugh at ourselves for dreaming too big but one day we’ll look back and wish we dreamed bigger. She gets the same thing every time we go for coffee. I always change my tune. I want us to keep this standing date forever but we’re both going to move, and eventually to the same city, and we’ll never just run into each other there like we do here. It's just another chapter. And I don’t really want to turn the page. 

My best friend tells me about all of her pain and I don’t know what to do with it. I want to catch it all but its too heavy and she tells me to be careful or I’ll cut myself on broken glass. She has my best interest even when I wish she’d be more selfish—but she needs to care like she needs to breathe.  She wants empathy and then advice, she says. So for a while we just sit and let our arms brush and look down at everything below and feel less alone. And then she’s ready and I’m ready and we’ll never really be ready. But we’re ok. And for a moment, it’s enough. 

My best friend and I don’t talk much anymore. Well on birthdays we do. And sometimes, when we stumble on an old picture, and the heart strings tug. I’ve told her I miss her before. And I tell my mom that too. And once I ran into someone who sees her all the time and I felt like I needed fresh air afterwards even though it was winter and I was outside. I don’t think we can fix it anymore. But sometimes I wish we would. 

I don’t want to talk about girlhood right now even though I love that girl version of me. I want to talk about this adult body and this adult brain. My lips, which I’ve always felt insecure about, but have been at the other side of someone’s best kiss. My grown up eyes, which I’ve always liked best but have been the subject of an insult seared with grill marks into my brain. My grown up mind, ever evolving, pretty and sad and cool. The opposite of nostalgia—the way the present moment just feels worth something when I know you’ll always pick up the phone. Sandboxes and sandcastles become dirty martinis and book club. Polly Pocket and my little purple backpack are suddenly todo lists and capsule wardrobes. You and I stay you and I. Even if we drift away, that’s ok. You were you, and I was me, before we were us. And whatever happens, we’ll have that version of togetherness. A pair. You told me the skirt was ugly when I asked if it was, but then you said I should wear whatever I want. Whatever makes you feel good, you say, makes me feel good. I love you for that. We pass glances back and forth and I know that’s one thing they’ll never steal. You make me like myself a little bit more than yesterday. A little bit more than he did. We go to dinner and we talk about every movie we’ve ever seen and I don’t think once about how bad my hair must look, or that I hate this one thing about me. I just think about how good it feels to be understood. 

Whoever said sex was the most intimate thing you could ever share, might never have been to the women’s bathroom at a crowded bar. 

I want to bottle up our feminine understanding, our female wavelength,  and wear the feeling like a perfume. It’ll smell like honey. It’ll smell like knowing. It’ll smell like those few minutes right after the rain—fine. Fresh. She gets it. And even if she doesn’t she’ll sit there with intent and heart and ask the right things. We can talk about the way he hurt me and the funny podcast I listened to and the shirt I bought on sale in the same breath. Something is sad and we sit there in a lonely sort of way and ten seconds later something else is funny and it's like a forest fire—I can’t tame us and eventually everyone else gets swept into it too. But I’m not in love with her. It isn’t like that. Somehow it’s more even though when I said I’ll probably always love my female friends more than a boyfriend or one day a spouse, people told me to go to Hell in the comment section of the TikTok. I’m in love with us. I’m in love of being seen as pink and pretty and powerful and sufficient and abundant even, when I’m just me. 

This isn’t supposed to be threatening—the girlish feeling of having a friend, the way I want to be Rachel when I grow up, the way I hang on Julia’s stream of consciousness texts, the way it feels every time I see Allie after months away or how it feels to see V’s name pop up on my phone. This is our lifeblood. It's about survival. Friendship bracelets and matching t-shirts and secrets and ‘text me when you get home’. 

We both know I’m dramatic but you’d never say I was being that way when I come to you feeling broken in two. To see someone as every part of, and then also, the whole, is to really see someone. And with you I feel seen. If you are around the bend, just upstairs or 789 miles away, knowing you is like a walk to the corner store. 

And as we go on, and on, and on—I might lose you or you might lose me. The sweet afternoons and standing dates might become once in a while or not at all. We might carry our memories in our purses with us when we pass that street corner or bookstore or tiny bar. My good smelling hair and your rom com obsession don’t absolve us from hurting each other or growing apart. We’ll write postcards to our naivete at 19, the way we miss being 23 and the night we first met. I hope you know that if we’ve ever shared a moment together or a bottle of wine or a brunch I probably look up to something about you, and you don’t even know. If I see you soon I’ll tell you. I won’t waste my time not sharing with you the parts of you I see as magic. We can grow up, we can grow out, we can grow old, we can grow distant, but I just hope we grow larger than life. I want you to take up all the space in the room with your heart and your voice because having something to say is enough. I want you to do the amazing things we said we would do when we were lying on our backs scrolling on our phones, dreaming with a hint of delusion. I want you to feel safe and feel held and greater than you felt yesterday. 

I want you to be OK. I want you to cry when your heart feels broken but know you are worthy of all the good things. I want that for all of us.

And no matter what, I love you. I love you. I love you more.