It was the first day of fourth grade following my ninth move in just as many years alive. Thankfully, this time I wasn’t the only new girl in town, there was one other, and as luck would have it, she also happened to be in my same grade. All of my new kid nerves melted away when I heard this news. I decided I would seek out who she was right away and we would become fast friends. I figured out of everyone, she would understand what it feels like to have to start over; To be uprooted from your home, your friends and everything you knew. With her by my side I would be unafraid of being the perpetual new girl. When I finally did meet her, she was so calm and cool, clearly already well-adjusted to her move. She had a natural confidence about her. I was awkward, shy and under-developed. She was tall for our age, a bubbly blonde, and judging by her womanly figure, she had likely already gone through the change. Maybe she did or maybe she didn’t, none of us knew for sure, but she definitely had “features” that stood out. It took her less than an hour to befriend everyone in our class. All the boys wanted her to be their first kiss and all the girls, well, we just wanted to be her. With such a “grown up” look about her, I remember we all immediately appointed her to the position of confidant, adviser, and the sole representative of ten year old girls everywhere. She carried all of our secrets. We went to her for advice on literally everything, from style, to friendship drama, to which team sport we should try out for; We thought she held the key to life. In looking back, she didn’t know any more than I, except maybe what underwire was. Truth be told, by this time I had already lived the equivalent of three different lives and probably knew more about sociology than some of the teachers in that building, even though I still looked like just a regular old kid.
Since my encounter with life size Barbie, I’ve since always wondered why we idolize people based on their physical appearance instead of getting to know the person. I love listening to someone’s story and learning from where they’ve been. Had I taken the time to share my story, I think my peers would have found I also had so much to offer. I could have been the class icon, and not because I was a trendsetter with nice cleavage, but because I actually had good advice to give, cultivated from real life experiences. I might not have been physically mature but I was equally mature in a deeply emotional way. By the time I was 10, I had already faced abandonment, loss, insecurity, fear, rejection, vulnerability, anxiety, instability, depression, grief, manipulation and a disproportionate amount of responsibility for a child. I lived most days in survival mode. I felt like a stray kitten – wild, distrusting and afraid. A byproduct of the stray kitten mentality is that I was learning to develop my own animal instinct, my sixth sense if you will, and with it, a whole lot of heart. Just like strays, we can’t choose the family we go home with. Some of us get the right influence and support and some of us don’t. Some of us have to figure it out on our own. Some of us have to abandon our childish ways early on because we are so laser focused on continuously overcoming adversity. I was a little girl with big feelings and no outlet. I was asked to carry the weight of big decisions made by teenage parents still trying to figure out who they were in the world and where they fit in. I was expected to learn quickly but not ask questions; to act your age but don’t act like a child. The uncertainty of what adult plot twist I would be asked to endure next had me super guarded. I was often on my own while my mother worked multiple jobs to make ends meet and went to college part-time. Thankfully, in my frequent solitude, I had become very self sufficient. I could cook my own meals, albeit mostly out of a box. I could run myself a bath. When we couldn’t afford Mr. Bubble, I figured out shampoo worked just as well. I kept the doors locked, a chair under the door handle, the windows and blinds closed tight, even in the summer, and obviously never left the house. I had a weapon, a Louisville Slugger passed down from one of my mother’s estranged brothers. It was intended for security but all it did was give me nightmares of the day I’d have to use it. At night I would lie in bed, awake, listening to the noises outside and thinking. I did a lot of thinking. Not as much talking. Just listening and thinking. I know now it’s the thinkers you have to watch out for. We bottle shit up. We push things down. We build castles around our hearts, with moats and towers, gates and bridges. There are no doors and no windows, just locks with intricate combinations. There’s one way in and it involves slaying a whole lot of dragons before you can even get to the gates, bridges, moats, towers and locks. When I wasn’t having nightmares, I was dreaming of the day I could get a job (escape), a car (escape), make my own money (escape) and leave the emotional rollercoaster that was my childhood, behind. I wished it away, birthday by birthday, star by star, clover by clover.
The independence I was entrusted with from an early age has been detrimental to my relationships over the years, dating all the way back to the days of being the new girl. I’m self reliant to a fault. Some view this as a blessing, but I think it’s a curse. I do not like to ask for help. I’d rather try and fail fifty times than to turn to the person next to me and say “Hey, any ideas?” Partnerships or working in groups is harder for me because I have to relinquish control and put my trust in others. This is something I attempt on a case by case basis. I have to relearn how to trust with each new person and setting. For me to let anyone truly get close is something that happens over a lengthy amount of time. As the Swiss author, Max Frisch said, “Time does not change us. It just unfolds us.” The positive in all this is that the people who are willing to put in the time to tackle the intricate origami that is my essence, have become some of my most cherished friends. In fact. many of my friends are 10-15 years older than me. I think there must be some correlation to my teen mother being a Gen Xer. Although we weren’t very close, I feel like I watched her grow up. I watched her breakups, her car troubles, her juggling act, her financial woes – all of it. I had a front row seat to her struggle. So when 50-somethings talk about their life, I feel like I inherently connect on some parallel level. It could also be my “old soul” as adults used to dub it when I was younger. I remember as a kid they would comment on how “mature” I was “for my age”. In the moment, their words felt like compliments but in actuality it was just added pressure to act a certain way. It gave me the impression that personifying a more grown attitude was pleasing to others. I spent so much time focusing on adults and adult behaviors, trying to mimic what I saw, thinking it would get me more praise and recognition. I should have been trying to spend more time around kids my own age, watching and imitating young people. Still to this day I don’t quite know how to relate to individuals my own age.
While I admired the my new friend’s physical maturity, I only wished I looked like that so that my adult-sized feelings inside matched what people saw on the outside. I haven’t quite figured out if it was the collection of Disney movies on rotation in my VCR or my obsession with Doogie Howser that saved me, but thankfully somewhere in the technicolor, I learned to dream big. I knew that something better was waiting for me and I knew I’d be alright because of my animal-like instincts and most of all my resilience. Fast forward to today. I still barely have cleavage, but more importantly I am comfortable in my own skin. I know who I am and what I want out of life. I’m still working on myself. However, I am not afraid to feel deeply. In fact, I feel so deeply that I cry sometimes for no reason at all and I’m good with that. We all need a good cry sometimes. I also cry for injustice, for poverty, for indifference, for hate crimes. I cry out of pride, out of love, in hope and in faith. I cry at world news, sad movies, obituaries, ASPCA commercials and burnt toast. I feel as though I’m making up for lost time when I had to tamp down all those feelings in favor of appearing more grown or put together. There are still times when it’s hard for me to be vulnerable with others. Allowing someone to uncover the depths of my character still scares me. It’s as if talking about your feelings out loud makes them come to life. For many years I thought as long as they are in my head or in my heart, they belong to me, but as soon as I speak them, they can be misrepresented, misheard, twisted, shaped and molded into something else entirely. I guess it all boils down to knowing when you’ve just got to kick fear in the face. Fear holds us back from change, from potential, from opportunity, from success, from meaningful relationships, from infinite possibility. Some days you can’t help but feel like the new girl, but don’t you dare compare your worth to anyone or anything physical. We are not limited by the way we look. Beauty fades. The only thing we are limited by is time. After all, we can only be the “new” girl for one day. Every day thereafter, just be you.