In fifth grade, another Ashley (there were so many of us then) used to say my fingernails were too long, they look like little onions, she’d said. I still hear her now when I look down at my hands, wedding band. Another girl whispered into my ear in the lunchroom, you need to wear a bra. I felt the blood rush into my cheeks, looked down at the slight points under my shirt. In gym class, one of the twins told me I should start shaving my legs, and I ran my hand over the blonde hair on my calf that had thickened in the last year or so. I was never girly enough for the girls or boy enough for the boys. Confusing ideas of femininity and girlhood swam around in my head. Although I didn’t know that’s what it was then; I thought I was weird and didn’t fit in.
I floated between the groups, somehow finding boyfriends who didn’t mind my cargo shorts and yellow, tech vest combo, who wanted to kiss me next to the tree in the school yard, despite my hands, hairy legs, and newly forming breasts, but also wanted to ride bikes around the neighborhood after school until our mothers called us home for dinner. The more masculine girls on my softball team made me uncomfortable and the girly girls did too. And now, more than discomfort, I think what I felt was confused. I always found myself somewhere in the middle, somewhere undefined – feeling like a girl, but not that kind of girl, never feeling fully comfortable or myself around most people.
I got invited to a popular girl’s Halloween birthday party in seventh grade and was so out of the loop I wore a blue, argyle sweater with a white button down under it and khakis, like a boy going to a Sadie Hawkins. I thought I looked amazing. I felt amazing. Everyone else wore costumes, and it was my first exposure to “slutty ____” costumes. In this instance a “slutty hippy”: multicolored, lowest-rise bell bottoms, thong sticking out the top, crop top. I watched her (seriously, another Ashley) use a load-bearing, metal pole in the basement as a stripper pole. I sat on a bean bag in my itchy sweater near the corner, hoping my mom would pick me up early. I wore Etnies that year, cargo shorts, and a baseball tee from PacSun, and listened to a lot of Weezer and Joni Mitchell. I looked like I walked out of an episode of Rocket Power, only I was in Ohio, in a conservative Cincinnati suburb, where it was always pretty obvious who had and who didn’t. Even there, I was somewhere in the middle.
A year or so later, I found a boyfriend who burnt The Used cds for me and wrote Blink 182 lyrics in notes, pressed them into my palm in the hallway, kissed me in line for the Tomb Raider ride at the local amusement park, a giant, busty Lara Croft and our matching shorts, looming overhead. He broke up with me for the popular girl, the one who had the Halloween birthday party, and I spent most of my freshman year trying not to look at them in the hallway. I moved into short-shorts and more feminine clothing, but still very much felt out of place. I never felt skinny enough, even though I had an athletic build, or pretty enough, even though a boy on MySpace told me I looked like Marsha Brady (what?).
I’ve been trying lately to give myself space in a variety of ways, to let myself be comfortable as I am – no matter what size I am or how long my shorts are (dressing a body that has birthed two children has its challenges) – and it’s really hard, still. But, I want to go back and tell young me to make room for herself, too. That it’s okay to occupy space, wear the long shorts, the yellow tech vest, fight the urge to make herself small.
Ashley Kirkland writes in Ohio where she lives with her husband and sons. Her work can be found in 805 Lit + Art, Cordella Press, 3 Elements Literary Review, Boats Against the Current, The Citron Review, Naugatuck River Review, among others. Her chapbook, BRUISED MOTHER, was released this spring from Boats Against the Current.
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