Project 2

A girl. Maybe that’s all she will ever see me as. Not her daughter, not her little girl. Just a girl. Does she not have anything better to teach me than what color clothes need to be washed on what day?

I wish I had a sister. Maybe she would understand why I don’t want to be forced to stay inside and do things for other people all the time. Maybe she could help me show our mom that I am so much more capable than she gives me credit for. Or maybe I would just be more alone in a world where there is always someone to compare me to. I guess nobody will ever know.

After forcing me to learn all of this randomness you’d think she would at least answer my questions. It’s like she expects me to know everything, yet treats me like I know nothing at all. Being a teenager is bad enough in and of itself; the last thing I need is my own mother telling me I’m not good enough.

I’d love to see the look on her face if I one day decided to become one of those “sluts” she’s always referring to me as. I’m not sure I even know exactly what that means, but, by the way she describes it, it has to be pretty bad.

I wonder if everything she’s telling me is what her mom told her growing up, or if it’s what she wishes her mom had told her. I wonder if she hated hearing what she’s telling me as much as I hate it. If she did, why is she still telling me all of this? She was a teenager once, how does she not understand how I feel?

Honestly, being a parent sounds terrible. Nothing about having to raise, teach, and watch over children while trying to live your own life sounds remotely appealing to me, but I could never tell my mom that. She practically has my whole life planned out for me. When I need to get married by, how many kids I’ll have, how old I’ll be when I have them, what school they’ll go to, etc. It’s like it’s not my life anymore. I’m really not sure she even wants grandchildren. But, everyone else has them, so of course she needs them too. I thought trying so hard to “fit in” was something you grew out of after high school. I guess I really do have a lot more to learn.

I’m sure my mom and I will work it all out in the end. Maybe I can be the woman that creates her own path, yet is still allowed near the bread. Every relationship requires compromise, right?

I chose to modify “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid because I have seen how always being told what to do by parents affects teenagers and thought it would be an interesting perspective to put this story in. One challenge I faced while trying to write this was not making it too broad. I had to focus on a few specific things the girl in the stories mom told her rather than discussing all of them to fix this problem. Through this project I have learned that the pov and voice a story is written in greatly affects the way it comes off to the reader. The voice and pov of one character in a story versus another could create two completely different stories.