Self-Confidence Traded For Self-Consciousness:
Reflections on the Abyss of Puberty
An imperceivable change occurs somewhere in the borderlands of puberty, a shift from natural self-mastery to sudden constraint. Young girls at this age are like the shoots of spring: tender, precious, and very easily nibbled away at. In this short story the author seeks to better understand this curious transition time through the photos of the women in her life, all taken from around the time of puberty.
In the photo I took from the album, I am eleven, a gangly fawn of freckles and braces. I am fumbling in my skin, uncertain of this borderland existence, caught between girlhood and young womanhood. Unknowingly I am already at my full height, already expected to see life at a certain level. With a burst of speed to pubescence, my body cracks under the pressure, thunderbolt stretch marks lining the unwanted expansion of my hips.
There are bangs in this picture, the kind everyone had in the late 1980’s, curled in some suspended, stiff wave of perfection. There is a strange despondence in those doe eyes, already desperately trying to fit in with all those other fawns, white dapples so cleverly camouflaged so as to not stand out. It was death to stand out. I see in my face that the gossamer net of childhood was no longer trustworthy, that the world was no longer with me.
In the photo I took from the album, she is maybe twelve, and in her face I see my face, my brother’s face, my daughter’s face, my grandfather’s face. The picture is faded into washed-out tones and textures, the scuffed gold of the grasses and the slate blue of a sky worn with no filter. She has one hand resting on the horse’s neck, a posture of absolute comfort and religious-like faith. The horse is a burnished hickory, the thick fuzz around his ears evident even in the blur and age of the picture. There is a white shock of almost circle on his snout which bows forward in bucolic grazing.
My mother looks as if under an equine spell. Horses were her obsession, her freedom, her sanity against a severely depressed mother, too many moves, and being too brainy to ever hope to fit in. Her way of dealing with the petty girls in her classes was to just hang with the boys; she spoke their language of straightforwardness and biology and math.
And once again she had her horses. Sometimes I wonder if she didn’t traverse the transition of puberty better than all of us because of them. They brought her a naturalness, a dappled shield of sorts from the outside world. An easy bond with all things living. She became a creature of the fields, riding when she should have been watching her little sister, or smuggling her large friends into the kitchen when no one was home to eat cake from the counter.
In the photo I took from the album, the outer edges of her eyes are already slightly turned down, her thick, black eyeliner a raccoon’s mask to hide the emptiness of her sea blue. The color of her hair is the same golden flax from her baby youth, some vestigial gosling feathers to pretty her outer shell, so good at disguising the slow, slick disappearance of her spirit.
Sisterhood within the bounds of a 10 year age difference is inherently challenging. I left for college and was so intent on the fight for my own life, I was not discerning enough to smell her own suffering. The stink of some dizzying vortex of self-hate, not so unfamiliar. The pain of trying to control a very out of control world through your own self destruction.
She never quite survived that transition, that crevasse of puberty. We are all still here, waiting, hoping that she might grow long fingernails and claw her way back to life, bravely inching her way through all of the dark passages of addiction and shame. We can not do this for her. No one can change her cravings, make her long to live, make her ache to choose herself.
In the photo I took from the album, she is wearing a fuchsia sweater and she has one lone blonde braid along the left side of her head. She is just about ten and somehow the rigidness of the school picture makes her look strangely mature. When the finished photos come home in their oversized white envelope, she takes one look and declares with delight, “Mama, I look like a teenager!”
The truth of it fills me with a pang of dread and the longing to suddenly sport some mom superpower of stopping time. But there is definitely something very grown up about the picture; just a little sprinkling of freckles across her nose to give her still lingering fawnness away.
And I feel her now at the edge of the abyss. That place I have been anticipating since her birth. That place I bring all my own baggage to, mostly sorted, but still some messy piles of healing and hope and regret and grief.
That place where spirited fillies get rounded up, the air rich with leather as rigid bridles are placed across their faces, the ever present threat of the bit pushing against their palates. Who lays these restraints upon us and why do we bow our heads to make it easier for them to be positioned? Just. Right.
There is some dark stealth to this riddle of transformation when self-confidence is naively traded off for self-consciousness. Some mystery to this place where females in their full sovereignty become specters of self-doubt, self-hate, and self-destruction, faint wisps of their former selves.
I bring to this chasm all of the nights I have stayed up tortured about having done enough to prepare her for this metamorphosis.
Stayed up late worrying about keeping her safe in this unsafe world.
Stayed up late longing for her to know her own unchangeable worth and goodness.
Stayed up late wondering if she knows to protect her self-love like a vault of crown jewels.
Stayed up late questioning if I have taught her to safeguard herself, to trust in herself with the whipping, wild fury of a hurricane.
It has to be enough now.
The foundations have already been laid. She is looking over the edge and the wind is already blowing her hair around. Like so many other rites of passage in life, there are no real words, no warnings to be given, just the opportunity to step through the threshold on her own, ultimately altered, emboldened by the change itself.
