growing up is hard to do
an essay inspired by the song of the week + your weekly poem rec
cw // sex; mentions of suicide, self-harm
note: the italicized lyrics are from the song Growing Up Is Hard by Chelsea Cutler, which I listened to no less than 50 times while writing this essay.
Threw a mattress on the floor and made a home out of a dorm room
I had a panic attack the day I moved into my dorm room. It wasn’t the overwhelming, overly warm welcome from my college’s move-in team or the chaos that came with a significant life change that sent me into a tailspin; it was the undeniable joy.
I was at my dream college pursuing my dream major, and it killed me that my presence there meant that I had to kill the only other dream I had left — to end my life.
After the panic attack, I tiptoed around my campus’ centuries-old buildings and freshly paved sidewalks to orient myself to this new reality. The Fray played in my headphones as my tears evaporated in the oppressive Texas heat. I peeked at the razors inside my phone case to remind myself to use them later. I felt hope, and it was worse than I could have ever imagined.
Now she’s 18, she can barely eat and barely drive / mind racing; what’s the meanin’ of being alive? / I don’t blame her for not doing anything she was supposed to
During my senior year of high school, while recovering from my first two suicide attempts, the only feeling I wanted to pursue was love — not platonic love, which I had in abundance (and should have treasured more) — but the type of reckless, irresponsible love that teenagers crash into with the person they want most to love them back (which is typically the person that shouldn’t love them at all).
I let my body be touched by almost anyone who asked, and I loved it because I loved being wanted. I performed practically every act that was asked of me, which was everything short of losing my virginity — something I know now to be a concept — and felt a crushing sadness when the boys got what they wanted and discarded me for the next willing girl … as if that’s not what every coming-of-age movie warns teenagers to prepare themselves for.
holding your hair back, wishing you had kept your body to yourself / can’t forget the way it felt
Because I attended a Christian university, which had strict gender restrictions in the dorms past 10 p.m., I chose to lose my virginity in the Super 8 two miles down the interstate at the end of my first semester. The boy was kind and slow and gentle. It was good; I was lucky. I didn’t love the act itself — feeling good, I learned, was not the same as feeling pleasure — but I loved knowing that my body could make someone else feel so good that they wanted to fall asleep next to me.
I chose to start having sex because I didn’t want to die before knowing what it felt like. For most 18-year-olds, death isn’t near, but for me, I hoped for it to be.
After that night at the Super 8, I expected to have one month of life left. Everything was prepared except for my body, which I sincerely believed needed to be held by someone else for it to have been worth remembering at all.
you drank yourself dizzy, held in all your secrets, took off running naked with a handle in your arms / woke up in a fever sweating out your bad decisions, couldn’t even see straight but you still got in the car / you tried to be the cool girl, you know the way the boys are, you just wanna talk but it’s your body that he counts / it’s snowing up in Amherst, you don’t feel a damn thing / everything’s a mess when you got nothing figured out
I went to all the parties and felt nothing. I drank my stomach lining away and somehow never blacked out, no matter how hard I tried. I couldn’t find relief anywhere, not even at the bottom of a bottle. Nothing ever hurt me as much as I wished it would.
During my second semester, somewhere between my failed — and what became my final — suicide attempt, losing my scholarship, and ultimately deciding to become a writer instead of a doctor, I met a man in his late 20s who said he wanted me.
He invited me to his office after hours, and I hated myself for going. He laid me on the dingy couch in the corner of the room and made me feel the best a man had ever made me feel. I loved how he touched me, but I couldn’t stand to look at myself afterward.
I didn’t understand why I had to be naked and vulnerable to feel anything at all. I knew I wanted my body back, but I didn’t know how to love myself if someone else didn’t.
you’ll always be a part of me / swear i’ll take better care of you
I don’t know when I finally decided to try to keep living. Sometimes, I think it was at the beginning of my sophomore year, after I met the boy who would eventually become my husband. Sometimes, I think it was one year into marriage, after I went to treatment to make sure I stayed alive so I could continue to be the wife, friend, sister, and daughter I’d realized I loved being.
In reality, continuing to live was not an intentional decision; it was a subconscious realization that I denied until I learned how to love myself when I wasn’t being touched by someone else, or when I wasn’t so drunk I couldn’t feel my tongue, or when I wasn’t so high that I forgot how to be afraid of dying.
i’m sorry that it hurt so much / growing up is hard
I grew up in that dorm room, in that Super 8, and in the arms of all the boys who fell asleep next to me on their beds before learning to pronounce my name correctly.
I grew up on the couch in the office of that 20-something-year-old man who picked up an 18-year-old girl from her dorm room. I grew up ten years later after realizing that I would never do that to a teenager as an adult.
I let myself grow up because I wanted to live. It hurt so much. It still does. 18-year-old me will always be a part of me. She would be proud of how well I take care of her now.
She would forgive me for how I treated her back then.
your poem rec:
What I Would Like to Grow in My Garden by Katherine Reigel
your song rec:
Growing Up Is Hard by Chelsea Cutler
all the love, all the warmth, all the light,
housekeeping:
icymi: i made a doc full of book recommendations for people who want to read more poetry but don’t know where to start!
don’t forget to complete your one click today to support aid efforts in Palestine
unfold: poetry + prose, is available on amazon, bookshop, indigo, b&n, or wherever you get books <3
you can still buy paper girl from amazon, barnes & noble, indigo, or your local indie.
i love you. and i see you. and i am so glad you're here.
who i am: a writer, a lover, and a very Black + queer person. i love deeply, forget rarely, and spend most of my time cuddling with my dog, my cat, and my partner.
who i'm not: a therapist, mental health professional, or emergency service. i love hearing the stories of your experiences, but please don't send explicit or triggering details of your story without my prior consent.
if you're in crisis, please call 911 or use any of the following resources:
National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 988
National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-SAFE (7233)
Crisis Text Line: Text HELP to 741741
S.A.F.E. (Self Abuse Finally Ends): 1-800-DONT-CUT (366-8288)
Eating Disorders Awareness and Prevention: 1-800-931-2237
RAINN (Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network): 1-800-656-4673
The Trevor Project: 1-866-488-7386
Love how you weaved the lyrics through this essay!! So clever!!
ari x chelsea is everything i’ve wanted