Finding Magic in Womanhood
Tonight the laundry room flooded with bubbles-again. The cap wasn’t closed properly (a sin I am guilty of committing frequently), leaving sticky lavender scented detergent to cover the powder blue tiles as I write to you. My favourite lipstick is also rolling around on the tile floor somewhere beyond the growing puddle, and someone’s left the radio softly playing in the other room.
It’s the day before I move out of my college apartment and officially enter the womanhood I’ve been dreaming of since I was little: one of independence, self expression, beauty and chasing your dreams.
And yet, I’ve noticed that girlhood is something that is far more celebrated than the latter. We reminisce over its innocence and simplicity, often feeling bittersweet about leaving it behind for the reality of being a woman.
Which I find ironic, because in many ways, girlhood is often just the experience of dreaming of growing up. From our fake little plastic high heels and purses we would carry, to the way we would shyly admire the ladies in our own lives- or those passing us by.
I remember staring with wide eyes as I saw their perfume collections or watching my mother’s handbag swing as she came home from work, keys jingling as they entered the kitchen to make dinner. If we think about it, our whole lives, we look forward to the very experience that we now take for granted.
We get to come home late with lipstick still on our coffee cups and perfume lingering on the collars of our coats, we get to go have lunch with our friends and lose our voices after talking for hours, we get to go to work and make money to chase our dreams, whatever they may be.
But the reason womanhood is harder to romanticize is because it comes with a large dose of reality. The smeared mascara, the piles of (not fresh) laundry piling up, the tired grocery runs and late evenings working into the night and that very particular gut wrenching loneliness of being an adult that girlhood just cannot compete with.
In spite of that, it contains something very priceless. That I continue to look forward to the most. Freedom. The ability to carve out your own path. To learn, to live, to make mistakes and be okay with them either way. Because they were yours after all. If I had to choose between a perfect life designed for me or an imperfect one that belongs just to me, it doesn’t feel like a difficult decision to make at all.
It can be a scary thing. To be pushed towards the proverbial edge of adulthood and see the wide possibility of your future in front of you. Of what it means to actually be a woman. To live life on your own terms. To go find a path of your own.
I hear laughter from the other room, the warm presence of a roommate I’ll never live with again, and the feeling of a chapter closing and another one beginning. Somewhere amidst my damp laundry tumbling in the dryer, apartment and job hunting I am entering the threshold into the rest of my life as a woman-and I can’t wait to see how it unfolds.
- M
