love, your future self

Article by Della Reichel Art by Perry Davis

How to break your hymen:

Riding a bike

Falling out of a tree

Doing the splits

Cartwheels in the grass

Dancing

Running

Swimming

Riding a horse

Yoga

Putting a tampon in

Sex

I don’t know my own body. I hate thinking about it. I ignore it until it’s unavoidable. I don’t even know what I want during sex. I’m so embarrassed to think about it that I’m afraid I’ll never have good sex. Are you all thinking about sex? That has to be how you know what you like and what you don’t. Was there a special sex meeting I missed?

And after sex? Sometimes I don’t even want to be held. Sometimes I want to pretend it didn’t happen at all. I want to lie in my big bed, as naked as can be, hugging my stuffed bunny and shutting my eyes so tight that I can feel — not just merely remember, but feel, actually feel — what it was like to be her. To be that young girl freely running through blueberry bushes.

The girl in that photo doesn’t care. No one said anything. She was wild, fierce, ignorant, and unaware. Running through blueberry farms in nothing but her white diaper, handfuls of blue bursting into her mouth, streaking down her face, her neck, her chest. I look at her photo, printed in black and white, plastered on the wall of my bedroom — she feels very far away.

I miss being a girl.

It wasn’t so much that her body was hers — of course it was, whose else would it be? — but more so that she didn’t even know she had a body. It wasn’t on her radar. She could dance naked in a tiara, take her shirt off at a backyard BBQ, or keep everything on if she felt like it. She didn’t think about her body. She didn’t have to.

It was in the spring of eighth grade when I realized I wasn’t a girl anymore. I was in that in-between phase where I had boobs but didn’t know it, so I didn’t dress any differently. The first time I became aware of my body — my curves, my shape, whatever other strange, man-made words people use to describe flesh and bones. Words used to describe plastic objects, architecture, or children’s toys. My body goes from being mine to being a shape in a category. I am suddenly either a rectangle, spoon, inverted triangle, pear, or hourglass. No one told my twin brother he was an hourglass. He got to be human-shaped for much longer than I did.

I should have known something was different that spring when all my friends stopped talking to me. I can see myself in my tiny Brandy Melville clothes surrounded by a table of popular boys. One of those boys was my best friend’s long-time — by which I mean three years long — crush.

Charlie

Deep down in the soles of my feet, I must have known these boys weren’t suddenly hanging out with me because of my dazzling personality or witty jokes. They didn’t want to spread out under the hot California sun with me just because. I longed to be wrapped up, held tight and never let go. I needed to tear off all my clothes and expose every inch of my soft skin to feel the warmth everywhere on me. But I was at school and sitting at a table of popular boys so those tiny Brandy Melville tank tops would have to do.

I didn’t want to know or understand the disappointment of the situation. I wanted to preserve my body and keep her the same as she always was. I don’t think I was ready to give it up yet. Maybe I’m still not. But it was never in my control.

Though they would never admit it, I knew it wasn’t the stars that aligned to make those ogling-uncontrollable-boners-just-hit-puberty boys want to be around me in my “showing too much” tank tops. It wasn’t fate or destiny or true love or any sort of love at all. It was because I was the first girl in my grade to start looking like the women they saw on the internet.

The two mounds of fat on my chest that sprouted up without my knowledge nor my permission had cost me all my friends. At 13 years old with B cups, I felt truly alone for the first time and I didn’t know what to do or why it was happening. How did those boys, my friends, and everyone else become aware of my own body before me? They seemed to see what I never wanted to see.

Sometimes when I think about my boobs, I think about them existing on me but not as me. It feels like a childhood friend who I've always had and will always have, but they come and go. When I want to feel especially removed from them, I imagine that they've gone to college and earned their degree. Maybe the left one in business and the right one in literature. Or something like that. Maybe they grew up, found spouses of their own, and had baby boobs that they make dinner for each night. Maybe they didn’t, and maybe they dedicated their whole life to their profession, working day and night because they love it. Maybe not. Maybe they are just part of me.

I don’t even know what I’m supposed to feel when someone touches them. Am I supposed to like it? I think it’s nice, but then I also think about breastfeeding, and I can’t stop feeling weird.

As I write this, my boobs are falling out of my much-too-tight, cutting-off-my-circulation, can’t-really-take-a-deep-breath-bra because I don’t know my size. I think this bra is trying to kill me.

I don’t know how to dress for them — when to let them out or when to tuck them away. I don’t have a single bra that fits me because I keep buying medium-sized bralettes from Target even though I know I am closer to a double D size. I feel somewhere between bothered and unbothered about buying a bra that fits properly. Getting a proper cage for them might give them the satisfaction of recognition. The wrong impression. I don’t want them to know I’m thinking about them — for all I care, they don’t even exist. But we all know they do.

I used to think being a twenty-something woman would be all about chain-smoking cigarettes and wearing sexy low-rise jeans like they do in Sex and the City. And sometimes it is. But most times it isn’t.

Sometimes it’s standing in a sex shop, face burning, wondering why I feel so bad about being there. Wondering why I’ve never touched myself and if I’m the only one. My best friend from home told me on the phone that she does it ALL THE TIME and she can’t believe I haven’t yet.

I think she meant to make me feel better. She didn’t.

Instead of feeling powerful at the sex shop, I felt like everyone (me and the one storekeeper who was listening to smut out loud on her phone) could see right through me, like they all knew I wasn’t the confident, sexy, happy woman I pretended to be. The huge monster-themed dildos and the tiny vibrators — they felt so naughty. And not in a hot way. In a disturbing, gross, and nauseating way.

I cried on the car drive home. This is so not Samantha Jones of me.

Should I tell my mom? Is that weird? Am I weird?

I wish I could warn the girl in the photograph. Tell her it’s not worth it to grow up. Don’t waste this beautiful freedom you don’t even know you have. I know it's not possible, but I want her to stay free and innocent forever.

I want to grab her hard by the shoulders and scream in her face, “Stay ignorant and in love with yourself forever!”

Maybe this is horrible and dramatic, but I want to say it anyway: I read a paper about life after the creation of the atomic bomb. It ended with the idea that there is no going back; there is only before and after.

In the after, I hope there comes a day when we all find our way back together. Me, her, my boobs, and my orgasms. We will join and become one again.

Sometimes when I ride my bike on a sunny day, I let my skirt float up with the wind. My upper thigh begins to peak out, asking for the sun. I will allow her to come out. For a moment, the world will slip away. The moment passes. I almost crash into the concrete trying to pull it back down.

I wore bows in my hair today. It feels really good.