The Girl I Used To Be

A little girl is sitting cross-legged on the bedroom floor with her hair pulled into two uneven ponytails, each one held together by a different-colored ribbon. Several strands have already escaped around her face, and there is a little crease between her eyebrows because she is concentrating very seriously on whatever she is doing. Her room is a disaster. Dolls are scattered across the carpet, clothes are hanging halfway out of drawers, and there is a collection of rocks on the windowsill that she has decided are magical.

I know everything about her. I know the little things she does when she thinks nobody is looking. I know which songs make her dance around her bedroom and which ones make her stare out the window. I know the clothes she will wear tomorrow, and the ones she will refuse to wear because they do not feel like her. I know the dreams she keeps tucked beneath her pillow, the ones she is not yet brave enough to say out loud. I know the people she will love and the people she will lose. I know the places she will go and the places she will leave behind.

I know her. But she doesn't know me. She cannot look at me and recognize the shape of her own face years from now. She cannot see the pieces of herself that will survive in me. She cannot know that every laugh she gives away so freely will one day become something I search for in quiet rooms. She cannot know that I will spend years trying to find my way back to the girl who never had to search for herself at all.

She gets up from the floor and walks toward her closet. She has changed outfits three times already today, not because she cannot decide what to wear, but because she likes seeing herself in different things. She pulls out a shirt that is far too bright, a skirt that doesn't match it at all, and a pair of shoes she insists make her look grown-up. The outfit is ridiculous.

She puts it on anyway. Then she turns toward the mirror and smiles.

She loves it. She put it on because she thought it was pretty, and that is enough reason for her. She does not stand in front of the mirror wondering if her body is the right shape for it. She does not pull at the fabric around her stomach. She does not turn sideways and decide that she looks too big, too small, too awkward, or too anything. She simply looks at herself and thinks she looks beautiful.

When she smiles, she does not hide her mouth behind her hand. She does not tilt her face away from the camera. She does not practice a smaller smile because she has learned that some smiles are considered prettier than others.

She smiles with her whole face.

She laughs too loudly.

She laughs when something is actually funny, but she also laughs when she is nervous and when she is excited and sometimes simply because she feels like it. There is something almost reckless about the way she gives happiness away. She has no idea that one day she will begin measuring it. She has no idea that there will be mornings when happiness feels like something she has misplaced.

Right now, though, she is happy.

Why wouldn't she be?

What in this world could possibly make her sad?

She has not learned yet that the world can be cruel without warning. She does not know that people can leave and still be loved. She does not know that some dreams take longer than expected and some dreams change entirely. She does not know that growing up is not one long staircase upward, but a winding road with places where you get lost and have to decide whether you are going to keep walking.

She hasn't learned to apologize for existing. I wish I could tell her not to. But I can't reach through all these years and speak to her; kneel beside her and tell her to wear her happiness like a crown. I cannot touch her shoulder and whisper some warning about growing up too quickly.

She starts to play with her dolls again. She has arranged them into a family. There is a mother, a father, several children, and one doll who appears to be a dog even though it has no resemblance to one. She gives each of them a voice. The mother is patient and kind. The children are always getting into trouble. The father seems to spend most of his time fixing things.

She picks up the smallest doll and cradles her carefully.

She wants to be a mother someday.

She has said it so many times that it has become a fact in her mind. She doesn't wonder whether she will be good at it. She doesn't worry about whether she will have enough money or whether she will be ready or whether life will turn out the way she imagines. She simply assumes that someday she will have a child of her own, and when that day comes, she will know exactly what to do because she will do it exactly as her mother did.

There is something almost painful about seeing the person you used to be before you knew how complicated your dreams could become. She has no idea what is coming. And maybe that is why I love her so much. She is untouched by the knowledge I carry.

She does not know how many times I will question myself. She does not know how many nights I will lie awake wondering if I am doing enough, being enough, becoming enough. She does not know how often I will compare my life to someone else's and convince myself that I am behind.

She does not know which dreams will come true and which ones will change.

She doesn't know that sometimes you grow up and realize that the things you wanted at eight years old are not necessarily the things you want at twenty-something. She doesn't know that changing your mind isn't failure. She doesn't know that there is no single version of adulthood waiting for her at the end of childhood.

Right now, she thinks growing up means becoming taller, staying up later, driving a car, and being allowed to make your own decisions. She has no idea how right and wrong she is.

I wish I could tell her that there is nothing wrong with growing up, but there is something terribly sad about believing you have to grow away from yourself.

She will learn. She will change. She will become someone different. But she will not disappear.

I know because I am looking at her.

She is still here.

She is buried beneath the expectations, beneath the doubts, beneath the exhaustion and the years and all the versions of herself she thought she needed to become.

She is here when I laugh at something stupid.

She is here when I wear something because I like it.

She is here when I choose the road that makes sense to me instead of the one everyone else says I should take.

She is here when I refuse to become someone I do not recognize just because the world would find that version of me easier to understand.

I have spent so much time wishing I could go back and become her again that I never stopped to wonder what she would think of me.

And she would be so proud of me. If she could see me now, she would think I was incredible.

Not because I have everything figured out because I don't. Not because I have become everything she imagined because I haven't.

She would be proud because I kept going.

She would think my life was exciting. She would think I was brave. She would probably think I was unbelievably cool simply because I am older and allowed to do things she cannot yet do.

She would look at the life I have built and see all the things she used to dream about.

She would see the person I love.

She would see the way my heart changed when I found someone who felt like home. She would probably ask a million questions. She would want to know everything. She would want to hear how we met, how we fell in love, what our life looks like, what we laugh about when nobody else is around.

And I know she would be happy for me. Because she always wanted love.

She wanted someone who would stay. Someone who would see her completely and still choose her. Someone who would make her laugh until her crooked teeth showed. Someone who loved her like her parents love each other.

And she would be proud that I am still trying.

I am not the carefree girl she is anymore. I have lost some of her certainty. I have learned things she never wanted to know. There are days when I feel like I have misplaced the brightest parts of myself somewhere along the way.

But I am still trying to find my spark. Still trying to laugh the way I used to. Still trying to look in the mirror and see something beautiful without needing someone else to confirm it. Still trying to become softer with myself. Still trying to remember that I am allowed to be happy simply because I am alive. She would probably be surprised to know how hard I have to work for that now. She would probably think it was strange.

Happiness used to be so easy for her. I wish I could borrow that from her. Just for a little while. 

But there is no going back now. Someday she is going to grow up. Silly clothes will become embarrassing, the magical rocks will be forgotten, and the dolls will eventually disappear into a box. One day she will look in the mirror and find things to criticize that she never noticed before. She doesn't know that she will become me. 

But for now she is still completely convinced that the world is a good place.

I see her now in ways I did not understand when I was younger. She is in the way I laugh when something catches me completely off guard. She is in the things I love without needing a reason to justify them. She is in the parts of me that still get excited over little things, in the dreams I refuse to let go of simply because they seem too big, and in the part of my heart that still wants to believe there is something magical waiting around the next corner. She is in the way I love the people who matter to me, in the life I am choosing to build, and in every road I take when I decide that my life belongs to me.

She is there when I choose joy even after learning how easily it can disappear. She is there when I try again after failing, when I forgive myself for not having everything figured out, and when I look at the person I am becoming and decide that she is worth loving, too. Every time I choose to be myself instead of who I think I am supposed to be, I am choosing her.

Maybe I was wrong all those years to think that growing up meant becoming someone new. Maybe becoming an adult was never about leaving her behind. Maybe it was about taking her hand and bringing her with me.

The little girl on the bedroom floor does not know it yet, but she will spend her whole life becoming me. And I will spend mine becoming more like her again, not by going backward, but by remembering what she already knew. That happiness does not have to be earned. That love is worth believing in. That it is okay to be a little strange, a little loud, a little messy, and completely yourself. That some things can be magical simply because you choose to believe they are.

She may grow taller. She may change her dreams. She may lose things she never thought she could live without and find things she never knew she needed. She may become someone she could not possibly imagine right now, but she will never truly leave this room, this little girl, or this version of herself behind.

Because she is still inside me.

She is in my laughter, in my loves, in my dreams, in my choices, and in every road I decide to take. She is the part of me that still believes there is something beautiful ahead, even when I cannot see it yet. She is the part of me that keeps reaching, keeps hoping, keeps loving, and keeps going.

And maybe that is what I want her to know most of all: she never had to become me to be enough, and I never had to stop being her to grow up.

She dreams about me. Prays to be just like me some day. But deep down I will always be her.

I am her, and she is the girl I want to be.