you're actually not "just a girl"

on feral womanhood

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I don’t know when I stopped being a girl and became a woman, but I think it had something to do with realizing that nobody was coming to save me. There is no prince charming, nor could I stay under my mother’s wing forever. One day, I just looked around and thought, "Oh. It’s me. I’m the adult." It wasn’t a birthday or a milestone, it absolutely wasn’t my period, and not some ceremonious moment where the heavens parted and declared me Woman. It was quieter than that. A slow trickle of realization, creeping in between heartbreaks and paychecks, between making doctor’s appointments and learning how to file a homeowner’s insurance claim (I do not recommend this one).

For years, I clung to girlhood like a life raft, clawing at the fleeting thing I was terrified of losing. Because what is a girl if not adored? If not preserved in some soft, sweet memory, wrapped in a satin bow? I swallowed the "just a girl" aesthetic whole — took comfort in its smallness, its prettiness, its built-in excuse for being lost. Being a girl meant being taken care of. Being a girl meant getting away with it. Being a girl meant not being liable for my own actions.

But then, one day, I didn’t want to get away with it. I wanted to own it. I wanted to take up space in a way that girls are told they aren’t allowed to. To sit on the bus without making myself smaller. To not bend my path to avoid men who otherwise would walk into me. To speak without the lilt of a question at the end of my sentences. To demand things, not just wish for them.

I wanted the kind of power that comes with being a woman.

And it turns out, being a woman is a feral kind of thing. It is teeth and hunger, it is knowing how to patch up your own wounds and read the fine print. It is becoming the person you used to hope would save you. It is tapping into something ancient, something instinctual: the Wild Woman archetype Clarissa Pinkola Estés speaks of in Women Who Run with the Wolves. It is the intuition that whispers even when the world tells you to be quiet; the raw and untamed spirit that survives despite centuries of suppression and erasure.

Estés writes about the wild woman as a force of nature, a deep-knowing, bone-calling kind of wisdom that cannot be silenced. It is in the way we listen to our gut, the way we run when something feels wrong, the way we reclaim ourselves after being broken. To be a woman is to remember that you were never meant to be domesticated. It is to howl when you’ve been told to smile, to fight when you’ve been told to surrender. Show your fangs.

But stepping into womanhood is also an act of defiance. Society loves to infantilize women, to keep us soft, naive, and pliable. "Girls" are palatable, but "women" are threats. We are told to chase youth like it’s the only currency we’ll ever hold. To giggle, to be agreeable, to let men explain things to us we already know, and to listen happily to an off-tune acoustic version of Wonderwall. When we stop playing along, step into our power, and reject the expectation of perpetual girlhood we become dangerous. And nothing terrifies the patriarchy more than a woman who refuses to shrink.

So no, I’m not "just a girl." I’m a woman. And I don’t need permission to exist loudly, to take up space, to be whole and reckless and real. And I want to wear a goddamn blazer without feeling like I am playing dress-up!

I have earned every inch of myself. And I am not afraid to take up all of it.