The Girl I Was and the Woman I'm Becoming

I was watching Everything I Know About Love the other night when something rather unexpected happened.

There was a scene where the girls make cocktails and dance around the kitchen like the iconic Midnight Margaritas scene from Practical Magic.

And suddenly I felt about twenty-two again.

Not literally, obviously.

I was sitting on my sofa, very much thirty-five, with the general responsibilities of a woman who has children, bills, laundry, and approximately seventeen-hundred things she should probably be doing instead of watching Netflix.

But for a few minutes, I was transported.

Everything I Know About Love does that to me.

It takes me straight back to my early twenties in the 2010s.

The friendships. Girlhood. The nights out. The questionable decisions. The enormous feelings. The sense that life was happening very quickly and that, somehow, everyone else had received the instructions except me. All the other girls had their plan, seemingly. 

It is a hard relate.

And I think that's why I love it.

Because watching those women made me remember a version of myself I haven't thought about properly in a long time.

The girl I was before I really knew who I was.

Midnight Margaritas

The scene itself is wonderful.

Girls in a kitchen.

Cocktails at midnight.

Dancing.

Practical Magic.

And yet, watching it, I felt something shift.

Because Practical Magic belongs to a completely different part of me.

A much older part.

The part of me that loved magic before I had language for it.

The part that was fascinated by things I couldn't quite explain.

The part that sensed there was something slightly different about the way I experienced the world, whilst simultaneously being rather unsure what to do with that.

And, if I'm honest, sometimes afraid of it.

There were parts of myself I didn't understand when I was younger.

Parts that felt too intuitive, too sensitive, too strange, too difficult to explain.

So I learned to tuck them away.

Perhaps you've done something similar.

Not necessarily with anything mystical.

Maybe it was your creativity.

Your sensitivity.

Your ambition.

Your imagination.

Your tendency to ask difficult questions.

The part of you that didn't quite fit the version of yourself everyone else seemed to understand.

We become remarkably good at editing ourselves.

The girl I was

Watching Everything I Know About Love brought back the girl I was in my early twenties with surprising clarity.

I remembered what she wanted out of life.

What she worried about.

How much she cared about being liked.

How much she wanted to belong.

How little she understood herself.

And how much she was trying to work it all out whilst pretending she already knew.

There is something quite tender about looking back at yourself at that age.

Because you can see things now that she couldn't.

You can see how hard she was trying.

You can see where she was protecting herself.

You can see the choices she made with the information she had at the time.

And you can see how many of the things she was searching for eventually became things you learned to give yourself.

I don't look back at her and think she was foolish.

I think she was learning.

So was I.

And then there is the woman I am now

This is where the Practical Magic reference caught me completely off guard.

Because the witchy part of me that once felt slightly frightening now feels like home.

I'm thirty-five now.

And I don't feel particularly interested in hiding those parts of myself anymore.

The intuition.

The astrology.

The rituals.

The fascination with cycles. Crystals. Tarot. Stopping to pick up a lucky penny or saulting Mr Magpie. 

The strange little moments when something simply feels significant before I can explain why.

I don't mean that I have suddenly started floating around the house in a long black dress, although frankly, I would support the wardrobe choice.

I mean that I've stopped feeling the need to explain away every part of myself that doesn't fit neatly into a rational little box.

There is something incredibly freeing about that.

And suddenly, they were both in the kitchen

I think that's what made the scene feel so emotional.

I wasn't simply watching two fictional characters dance around a kitchen.

In some strange way, I felt like I was watching two versions of myself meet.

The girl from my twenties who loved fiercely, wore her heart on her sleeve, wanted to belong, and was still trying to work out who she was.

And the woman I am now, who is finally becoming comfortable with the parts of herself she once found difficult to understand.

One brought the nostalgia.

The other brought the magic.

And there they were.

Together.

Dancing in the kitchen.

Neither one needing to disappear so the other could exist.

And the best part is, these two women, these two parts of myself, they really love each other, fully, unconditionally. 

Perhaps growing up isn't becoming someone new

We talk about becoming our "best selves" quite a lot.

I've never been particularly fond of the phrase. 

It makes becoming an adult sound like a renovation project.

As though the woman you were at twenty-five was simply an early draft, and the goal is to eventually produce a much more polished final version.

I'm beginning to think it works differently. I am messy. Emotional. All over the place. 

Perhaps growing up is less about becoming someone new and more about becoming willing to meet all the people you've already been.

The awkward one.

The ambitious one.

The heartbroken one.

The hopeful one.

The slightly chaotic one.

The one who didn't know what she was doing.

The one who knew exactly what she wanted but was terrified to say it out loud.

The one who felt different.

The one who tried desperately to fit in.

The one who has got her shit together. The one who loves and is loved in return. The one who creates. The one who is strong.

None of them need to be erased.

They all brought you here.

I think I'm finally ready for the magic

There is something quite lovely about reaching an age where you realise you don't have to keep negotiating with yourself.

You can simply say:

This is me.

I like astrology.

I like rituals.

I like sitting quietly and noticing things.

I believe there is value in paying attention to cycles and seasons.

I am interested in the mysterious parts of being human.

I don't need to pretend otherwise to be taken seriously.

And perhaps that is the real connection between the girl I was and the woman I am becoming.

A little note to the girl I was

If I could sit beside that younger version of myself for a few minutes, I don't think I'd give her advice.

She probably wouldn't listen anyway.

I'd just tell her that she doesn't need to understand everything yet.

That the things she finds strange or scary about herself won't necessarily feel strange forever.

That one day, she might stop trying so hard to become the person she thinks she's supposed to be.

And that some of the things she's currently trying to hide might eventually become the things she loves most about herself.

I'd probably tell her to have another margarita or two, too.

It seems appropriate.

The versions of us don't disappear

Perhaps this is what nostalgia really is.

Not simply longing for the past.

Sometimes it's a reminder.

A little tap on the shoulder from someone you used to be.

A memory that says:

I'm still here.

And perhaps we don't need to go backwards to meet those versions of ourselves.

We can invite them into the life we're living now.

The girl I was doesn't need to become the woman I am.

She already helped create her.

And the woman I'm becoming doesn't need to leave her behind.

She can take her hand.

They can dance around the kitchen.

And, for a moment, neither of them needs to wonder where they're going.

They already know they've found their way home.