When Do They Let You Grow Up?

Rita Ora with a chrome dinosaur spine, 2023

bored (ignoring a ridiculous amount of tasks)

the memory changes

Denial is a forked-tongue deceiver,

affirmation is a blinded believer,

both are true and wrong,

depending on the song…

we really went from "women and girls can do anything" to im just a girl i only do girl math im a passenger princess i dont drive i dont eat i just do haha girl dinner im so sillyyyy i wear makeup bc i want to i also try and define all women into categories that are marketable omg what if we were just girls and we were so useless and helpless

in the wake of losing someone we find parts of ourselves that were buried under the noise of our lives

red used to get me scratchies and we'd sit in his truck quietly working quarters over papers. we aren't biological - my parents are friends with him; i spent enough summer weekends at their cottage on the beach that it feels like family anyhow. he and his wife come to all the family big events like it's no big deal.

i get nervous around people a lot. like i am am intruding, somehow, just by existing. red has the kind of personality that feels calming - like, it's okay, you're supposed to be here. i often will bolt through any explanation of my life or passions - blurting it out in a series of seconds, worried i'll be cut off or it won't be interesting to the other person, desperate to get a sentence finished.

sometimes i wanna be a good friend like painting the sky yellow just 'cause it's your favorite color. like made your favorite dessert. a week ago i caught my finger in a food processor making a three-layer chocolate mousse. called my brother from the kitchen floor, holding paper towel around the cut. surrounded by blood and crushed oreos. after this - i'm okay - i still finished making the dessert.

i used to think if i could study love - in books, in tv, in magazines - i could figure out how to get comfy with it. to trust it. other people kept telling me life is a tightrope love is a net! and i'd flinch. a net is, at the end of the day, to catch things. i can't explain why that's scary.

red says the truck only runs because he asks it nicely. it should have died 23 years back, if anybody is counting. it was quiet in their cabin. the quiet used to make me uneasy. i was waiting for something bad, certain it would happen eventually.

sometimes i think i have to make up for all the ways i'm a bad person and for all the ways that bad things have happened to me by being the nicest, kindest, most beautifully-charming person who will ever be. i think i have to make everyone laugh and clap and leave smiling. if i am very good, they will love me. i still think the love will wear off when they look away. that it comes temporary. so i have to keep it up. i have to keep up being perfect, always, and maybe one of them will keep me.

red once greeted me for the summer by waving me over to a small freezer in the garage. he was secretly stashing all the popsicles with our favorite flavor. truth be told, i think he probably showed my siblings, too - and all the adults definitely knew. but it felt good to pinky-promise that this was just-between-us-two.

i think maybe sometimes the way we learn how to love is just osmosis. like - i wasn't always raised right. i learned love is thin. that it flakes off easy, butterfly wing material. that you have to scrape by with what you get. that you have to earn it. that you have to be funny, cool, full of exciting interests.

if you're lucky, though. i think the quiet ways people can love us work just the same. the simple, gentle hush of a summer holiday. the way the hydrangeas got tall and bushy. what i'm saying is that... if i'm good - really good - if i believe in love, i mean.

i only believe in it because of the way those few kind people showed me. in all the rest of it. their gentle image - eventual reprieve.