duality of a girl

I've come to realize that there's some inevitable degree of polarity in my life. Polarity between what I think and what I say and between what I want and what I have – I'm always feeling two things at once and I can never admit that I'm wrong, even just to myself. It doesn't always show up on a grand scale, but the feeling presents itself on a consistent and humbling basis. Like when I see a girl my age at the grocery store and she’s buying the same almond milk as me, and I want to tell her that I hope whoever she ends up marrying is sweet and appreciative and I hope she can go to bed at night without thinking of everything she should’ve said but didn’t and I hope the dinner she’s making turns out well. But instead, I tell her I like her outfit. The good news is that this is far from an original experience because everybody is a mosaic of polarities. We can all be mean sometimes and we can all be soft. We can attempt to appear as the most mysterious person wherever we are, knowing if anybody approached us, we'd overshare within the first minute of the interaction. The collective desire to learn every skill, read every book, listen to every song, and be every person can only exist alongside the knowledge that we cannot possibly do it. I'm laughing and crying and I know myself so well and sometimes I don’t recognize my reflection so I have to look twice. I allow both feelings to exist because I know they are necessary – being sandwiched between the inconsistencies is the sweet spot of this tragedy.

My perspective on the world changes often, oscillating between gratitude for everything I have and mourning over what could have been. But I’m learning that polarities soften, and every disparity baked into my existence becomes dull around the edges. I realize that I thought things would happen one way only to be met with clarity of mind. It gently and lovingly tells me how entirely wrong I was about everything – how I might actually miss the mountains after wishing for the beach my whole life and it turns out that I don’t love June like I used to because it feels somber now and demands to be examined. I can’t lie to myself for the sake of being right. And sometimes it feels like sitting at a dinner table across from some girl I used to be, and she’s holding every situation she thinks she’ll never get over and every dream she has and everything that makes her cry, and I’m sitting there knowing she’ll be more different by the end of June than she is between birthdays. It’s not over, nothing ever really is, the feelings just exist in different ways. Hunger turns into gratitude and rage turns into passion. When they do, I remember how the sun felt on my skin yesterday when it was so bright I thought I could see everything. I remember thinking I might never feel warmth again while scraping ice off my windshield on a morning in January and thinking I will never be cold again when I didn’t know how to change an AC filter in my 400-square-foot apartment, and it was 80 degrees inside but felt like 110. Energy can’t be destroyed. It finds me over and over again in new ways, constantly reinventing itself.

I experience polarity in perpetuity and it’s often the cause of my confusion. It takes work to exist so graciously spread between two opposite ends of a spectrum. I know more than I ever have about things that don’t matter and significantly less about things that do. I have so much love for myself, but where does it all go when I have a piece of gum for lunch? Or when I’m asking Google something ridiculous, like how many calories are in a tablespoon of honey. On Monday I’m never spending money again and on Thursday I’m tracking the package I ordered later that Monday. I’m both the detective and the criminal in this game, executing both roles with tactful oblivion. I look at the ocean and think nothing matters, and in my bedroom everything matters so much. I’m either completely engulfed in something or severely disinterested. My best friend lives across the country and there’s no one I’m closer to or better understood by. Taking photos of the moon whenever I can versus twenty-four years of evidence that they never turn out well. I work towards a gratifying and passionate career that a future version of me will be thankful for, but I know we aren’t supposed to work as much as we do (forty-hour work weeks were never supposed to happen). I want so much and I’m never satisfied because I’m always moving towards something new. When the chase ends, I kick it down the street and go the opposite direction looking for more, each time expanding the liminal space between lost and found.

But it's really not that deep! Because I don't need to win every battle. The world is so demanding and sneaky in the way it convinces me that I'm not doing enough or that I don't have enough. It's exhausting to continuously want things. I have wanted things my whole life – yearning has just become a part of my womanhood like it's an unavoidable rite of passage. Is it not enough that I’m alive? I've already accepted that my necklace clasp will always be showing and that I can't be the coolest girl and that I'm still jealous of fifteen-year-old me for her naivety. I've already surrendered to the fact that there's nothing else to figure out because I've always been me, and I know myself. And I know everything that's ever happened to me and everything that will happen to me and that actually, fifteen-year-old me is way more jealous of twenty-four-year-old me than I am of her. She was malleable by nature, almost to a fault. In an attempt at self-discovery she looked for herself in everything. She was nutrient-dense soil that retained water just as quickly as she crumbled apart in the hands of someone less careful. I fought wars to get here; I earned my softness and gratitude and became more gentle with time. I found space to hold my complexities – wanting to scream as often as wanting to be silent. Being both here and not here. But I never did anything unforgivable and I am not evil. If my worst crime is being a paradox of desire then I am still profoundly loved on this earth.