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June 17, 2015

To Myself at Age 11: What I Wish I’d Known.

tween girls

You’re in the worst of it.

The most awkward, in-between, hormone-wracked era of your young life. In a few decades, there will be a word for this era: tween. But for now, you’re in the thick of it, and it remains nameless.

This is what I want you to know:

Friends. You’ll search desperately for a best friend this year. You’ll try different girls on like jeans, waiting to find the perfect pair, flinging unflattering ones aside while yearning for trendy pairs that are too small. You’ll feel lonely and hopeful and lost. But it’s a myth that you need one friend to be your everything. You can cobble a variety of different friends together—a cuff here, a pocket there. Together, they will keep you warm and covered.

Menstruation. When your period arrives, tell your mom. Bring pads and extra panties everywhere you go. Otherwise, when you spend the weekend at your grandma’s and get your period—which for a while, will be like the weather, sweeping in without warning—you’ll feel you have no choice but to steal her underwear. And this will flush you deep with shame, because you’ll literally be wearing Granny Panties. Also, though she’ll never mention it to you, and despite your sneaky, stealthy ways, your grandmother is totally onto you. She knows you stole her undies.

School. Your parents will come to you mid-year with furrowed brows. They will ask you what happened to your high, sturdy grades. They will point at the shocking bulge of D’s on your report and ask you why. They tell you your science teacher told them you look around in class all the time. They will ask you why this is all happening and the truth is, you don’t really know. It will take you decades to find the answers: because you’re bored. Because no one told you there was no recess in middle school. Because you don’t understand how the two-letter element chart translates to gleaming metals or glowing gases. Because your moods are like eruptions, fierce and unforecasted.

You’re not alone. There are other girls like you. They fall asleep at night, curled beneath the sweet must of books. Or with their fingers exploring the dark, mysterious twists of flesh between their legs, glistening with shame and longing. They twine words together, trying to find the right cadence, to say something they can’t yet say aloud. Their dreams are fierce and fiery. Someday you will find these girls, who will by then be women, and they will feel like home.

Fashion. When you pick out your new glasses, don’t pick out the giant-framed ones that make you look like Tootsie. You don’t have to listen to everything your mom says, but please, please, listen to her on this one.

Your body. You are just beginning to notice the geometry of the human shape. You see the curving golden bodies in men’s magazines, which bloom in exactly the opposite of your own ovoid one. You can try and fight it, but this shape is settled in your bones, in your DNA. Though you will starve and run, count calories and consider surgery, this will be your body, and it’s not wrong.

Personality. People often say you’re too sensitive. Ignore them. Your sensitivity is the part that sometimes takes criticism to heart, leaving you hurt and deflated. But the part of you that makes you feel everything so intensely is also what makes poems spill out of you. It’s the magnet that will connect you to others like you. It’s what gives you heart and spark. You are just the right amount of sensitive.

The in-between. You are stuck between two places now—your girl-self sloughing away. Your young-woman self waits, blurry and unrecognizable, on the other side of a wide chasm. Sometimes you feel like your body betrays you with its sudden sweat and musk, with its new hair and blood. This changing is achy and awkward and it takes much, much longer than you’d like. But you will land, firmly, on the other side. And though altered, you will still be you—you will still love books and trees and long, slow songs.

Boys. That dream you already have, borne of fairy tales and Hollywood? That some beautiful boy will come along and rescue you, or you him? Listen, and listen close, because this will save you years of heartache: Burn the dream. Watch it crisp and curl and ash away. The only one any of us can save is ourselves. And don’t worry—you will. I will.

We will.

 

 

Relephant: 

For My Daughter: 15 Life Lessons I Wish I Had Received Growing Up.

 

 

Author: Lynn Shattuck

Editor: Catherine Monkman

Photo: Alena Navarro-Whyte/Flickr

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