the age of the dancing queen
the age of the dancing queen
young and sweet, only seventeen!
happy birthday FKA twigs, but more importantly, me!
another year has come and gone; another trip around the sun, if you will. it’s currently 10:33 as i’m typing this and i’m afraid i’ve been overcome with an undoing of sorts. a certain melancholy infiltrated my one most special day of the year. now, i don’t want to brush over my own sadness, especially whenever i made a promise to myself to not ignore the way i feel and how it affects both my daily life internally and for the people around me.
a lot of this inner turmoil comes, from what i can make out of it, the fear of growing up. that’s such a solidified statement i almost find it terrifying to really put a push-pin on it. it’s a million different, equally terrifying realizations stemming from that one idea. that one fear.
i’ve spent a lot of my childhood yearning for the freedom that comes with being a teenager, a young adult, a real-on-the-dot-adult, etc. the real deal “i can do my own shit” type of person. just recently i think i’ve backed away from the freedom i wish i had, to completely abandoning the set of values and rite-of-passage’s i am seeing other people attaining and being atom-close to reaching right now.
i feel like lucy dacus put it best in the song “cartwheel”, but i fear i’m a little bit over the age of being upset that my friends are dating boys. it’s still a certain point of mourning i’m trying to really put my hands on. you are nearly a legal adult, why don’t you feel like it? why don’t you want the things everyone else wants?
why don’t i want it anymore? those wings i’m so close to fully growing, what happened?
the closer i get to the milestone everyone around me is begging to reach i go down a couple of levels, and i find the ground more comforting than ever. an impostor syndrome of sorts, maybe. i didn’t bring myself out of bed everyday for nearly two decades. except i did, and i took all of the hard classes, too. and i made my own lunch everyday and at a certain point i started driving a car and going out by myself. but i didn’t. i’m still going to bed at 9:30 p.m. and i’m going to the library with my grandparents.
it’s like everyone’s trying to grow up faster than you but nobody is actually doing anything that drastic. i’m a mile behind everyone else when i’m supposed to be at my prime.
it’s such a strange, isolating feeling. the loss of childhood. it’s nearly over. maybe i want to be carried to my bedroom a few more times. is that a crime?
such an odd point in your life that maybe a few teenage girls can really find the words to talk about it coherently. you are seventeen and you know everything and nothing. you want to scream into the woods until your lungs collapse and you want someone to wake you up for school every morning.
and you hear everyone talk about how you lose a lot but gain more whenever you age, and maybe change shouldn’t be that scary, but what if i don’t want to lose anything? why should i have to lose anything at all? i want to collect it all like rocks or bottle caps. i want to grab the knowledge i acquire and stuff it in the trunk with all of the other pieces of me like my stuffed animal i bought with my grandpa’s money at 10, and the book i bought the other day.
i don’t like leaving 14 year old me in the dirt, she’s still me! she had me now inside of her! all along i was there! her little heart was too aware of the things now and i feel like i should be allowed to tie her to me for life.
i want to hold my parents hands walking across the street. i want to go to the park and enjoy that time spent alone in the dirt, or up in the air, reaching for the sun like if i kicked my legs back and forth fast enough i’d reach it. to close my eyes and let the plastic slide burn my legs in mid july. to stay in my childhood bedroom forever, and sit on the couch and read my book until my eyes hurt. i want to be carried from the car.
it’s a good thing, too. everyone wants freedom but maybe the worthiness i should feel for it hasn’t hit me yet. there are steps i’m missing.
(there aren’t)
it’s a very weird freedom, i think especially in america, whenever you get to be able to drive. that no longer dependable on your parents feeling is a very suffocating and terrifying change but one that’s also very, very mild and in all honesty something that’s expected.
i do feel grown up in your car. i feel grown up riding to the bookstore without my dad in the car. or using a wallet. or having my own money.
the first time i rode in a car with a friend who got their license i went home and cried. i couldn’t explain the feeling if i tried.
pure heroine is one of the only albums i can name that really places it all out on a plate and i can genuinely identify with.
it’s the weird mundane things you miss a lot even if you still have them.
my parents let me stay home and i hated it. the alone time whenever you were a middle schooler was something cherished, like getting your very own car. let me play adult house for four hours. i was sixteen whenever the realization crept in that the number of days we have together aren’t very large. sooner or later i’ll be home on weekends and my bedroom will just be a childhood bedroom. a relic of something once living but now gone.
i find nostalgia comforting and painful. more painful than comforting.
for now, i am spending my days grateful for everything handed to me. i am spending all of my time with the people i need the most instead of my friends. i prefer grocery shopping trips and jeopardy.
i’m trying to grow into my own skin and not cry whenever i’m asked about my career in the future. there’s a lot going on up there, that brain of mine, what am i supposed to do with all this learning i have to do? and the short amount of time i’m given to make adjustments everyone else seems to have already made?
i want to graduate and sit in the sun. i want to feel it on my back and let the wind pass through one ear and out of the other.
i love everybody and everything. i thank myself at seven years old for developing a heart too big for her body. Lord knows i need it.