I have just recently turned 20 years old (happy late birthday to me!). With this new number attached to me, some things have changed. I am one year closer to my twenty-first birthday, I am halfway done with college, and I am no longer a teenage girl.
That last one feels like a pound of bricks falling on me. I loved being a teenage girl. I loved the femininity of it all. As a teenage girl, you have the ability to be able to reinvent yourself as many times as you need. You can be any character you want. You are still shiny. You have so much hope, so many dreams, and so many things that you 100% believe that you can do because you have never not done them before. You are given grace to fail and stumble and fall. There was the angst of defending your teenage-ness. Older people would try to say, “You’re just a teenage girl,” like that isn’t a badge of honor — like the inner thoughts of teenage girls aren’t the things that pop culture is centered around. Being a teenage girl is like being in a secret club. You know the language: the ‘Girl Code’.
Without the security blanket of being a teenage girl, I feel exposed. Everything I could fudge my way through and confidently look past is now being brought up against me. I am back to being a little fish in a HUGE pond. All the reasons I loved being a teenage girl are now the reasons I hate being a ‘twenty-something’. I hate that I am no longer given grace to fail, even slightly, because I should know better. I hate that I can no longer reinvent myself for fun but reinvent myself to get a job or to please the people around me, making myself profitable. I hate that I am no longer shiny. There is no childlike wonder; there are just deadlines, trends I don’t understand, and horrifying questions about my future.
As a teenage girl, I could make Pinterest boards about my home, wedding, and career, and it was all fun, like being a psychic. I was trying to take a glimpse into my future because there was no reason it wouldn’t work out. Now, I am trying to look for an apartment with my two roommates, and I think Oscar the Grouch’s setup might be the arrangement for next year. I am being bombarded with questions about internships, money, careers, and possible relocations, but I’m not just a girl anymore. I can’t just pin something and have it materialize.
This is not hate mail to all twenty-something women. This is just a love letter to being naive. To being shiny. To not let anyone question your plans. To have a secret language with an entire demographic. To be able to dream freely.
To being a teenage girl.