I'm Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman

I’m not a girl, not yet a woman.

In theory, just a Britney Spears song. One that was premiered at the end of a roughly written, yet a guilty pleasure of a movie, which chronicles the road trip to California we all hope to take someday.

While some may scoff at Britney, she’s a rock. The ultimate comeback kid and one of the few Hollywood Divas who can rock being bald. After her brief aneurysm that can also be referred to as Kevin Federline, she managed to pull herself out of the coma that threatens all of us after a marriage ends. Or any relationship for that matter.

But the most complex relationship that she pinpoints is the internal struggle of females. And she does it simply- I’m not a girl, not yet a woman.

One could argue that a girl becomes a woman when she turns 18. That’s how the government views them anyway. All it takes is the tick of a clock to take me from adolescent to adult.

However, the only change I felt on my 18^th birthday was massive discomfort as my mother dragged me to an adult bookstore to celebrate “because we could.” I guess it could have been worse. She could have made me fight for my country or get married. Anyway, basically just another day.

But I’m 21 now, a senior in college and have successfully lived in 3 different cities. I should be a woman by now. I can keep myself alive, cook a meal, vote and shoot whiskey (legally).

Yet, why is it that I always feel like I’m still a teenager? That when I have to make an appointment for myself or wear ‘business casual’ attire I feel like a little girl playing dress-up?

Maybe it’s my complete lack of direction. Sometimes I feel like I have my words and nowhere to put them. Perhaps all it would take is a call from the New York Times for me to feel like I’m a woman. Career direction, financial stability, all things that my parents can discuss in their respective operating rooms during the rudimentary ‘let’s see whose kid wins today’ talk.

Maybe it’s being single. This I feel like should be zapped off because any psychiatrist worth their salt will tell you that how others view you isn’t important. Yet, there’s no time when a woman feels more powerful that when a man finds them beautiful. This is the secret no one knows, no men anyway. The one we women keep a secret, hidden away so no one can get to it. Maybe a man makes a woman, no matter how much we don’t want to admit it.

Or is it something else?

Is it okay that I sometimes feel like a girl? In discussions of life and love with my family, I constantly hear “you’re an adult now” or “you can make your own decisions, after all you’re 21.”

 Ironically, it’s the times that they say this that I feel the youngest of all. Like I may as well be sucking my thumb while we discuss my tuition bill or internship opportunities.

Maybe it’s forever a state of being, this in-between stage. Maybe girls never fully reach womanhood.

Men can hold on to their childhood abandon in the love they give to their favorite sports teams and my mother and her friends became 16 again when Davy Jones died.

Maybe limbo is where we all live forever.

I just hope the taxes are reasonable.