What is girling?

I’m terrified that what I have to say has all already been said before. Terrified in a way that my lips quiver, and tears turn my eyeballs into buoys of a wide, still sea. They ebb with the soft sobs of insecurity. Bouncing almost playfully in salty, wet sadness. Eyes so big and round and brown that when forlorn, when confused, or angry, or daydreaming, they disrupt those around me. I cannot help it if my face displays all my emotions — and wrongly. I say wrongly because all of a sudden, there is a “typical” way to express emotions on one’s face. And we’ve never talked about it more than now. But I think they’re all wrong, I’m sorry to say it.

Girling is the anti-AI. the anti-industry. the anti-history. the anti-hero.

Girling is a commitment to play and to make mistakes.

My face is typical. Two eyes. Nose. A couple of moles here and there, but nothing exceptional. My teary eyes are the same old cliché, like that of a teenager. And why should teenagers get all the excuses? They own the glory of moodiness. Their behaviour is excused with shrugs. It is a known-known. Teenagers are upset, difficult to motivate, disruptive or absent. I know that in this way, they are free from repression and expectations of obedience, though they disbelieve it. There is freedom when the world expects so little of you! Their irritating questions towards authority are considered natural, a moment of growth, personality-building, or “finding oneself.” Of course, almost all teenagers suffer. Misunderstood by parents, or misunderstanding themselves, toxic mistakes of the self before the self is even fully developed. Blahblah insert your Freudian or psychological research here. At the end of the day, we were all teenagers, and it is not a time I easily forget. 

Same as when I was 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, from my chest I want to shout, IWILLNOTBESILENCED!!!!! Yet my forehead is scrunched, and my tongue is hiding in the back of my throat, the coward. I am not a teenager. I am a grown woman. Heavy. Birthed two babies, hips too wide for a swing-set. Repetitive. Oh, the pace of these stories, like that of a Donaldson rhyme! Redundant. Redundant. Basic. Working the 9–5. A daughter, then a son. A husband (twice). A house (soon). Heterobasic. Boring boring boring — a fear of boredom. There is as much said in there that is unsaid. Read slower, call it poetry if you like. 

If I fear boredom as much as the tween, teen, kid — heck, a mother-effing goat — then why must I behave? Repress? Speak politely, smile softly, wait my turn, hold open doors… Complete the sentence and be sure to make my sentiments fully understood. Avoid misunderstandings at ALL COSTS. Don’t get me wrong, I do not intend to be mean or narcissistic or what some identify as some sort of ‘tism, a lack of empathy. It’s rather the opposite. I am feeling so deeply that I have very little patience for pretending otherwise. The flair for the dramatic is how I experience the world. My resistance to grammar and reading has never stopped my need to write. Though I am not palatable — I am certain of this because at this point your instinct is to look away, scroll away, cringe, raise shoulders, furrow your own brow — come on, then, let’s tween together. Sink deep in that feeling for me. Despise! Isn’t that a word so sweet and soft sounding? Whisper it to yourself, despicable. You’re getting me hot and bothered now. 

What am I trying to say? Something that has been said before, but this time I’m saying it my way. Because two degrees and endless editing does nothing but break you down, make you feel insignificant and wrong and robs you of your girlhood. Summer evenings in the streets of suburbia. Magazine clippings taped to the walls. The era of nostalgia is important. It is staged. It is a tool for facism, do not be fooled. Our girlhood is not gone. It is here, within us. 

Girls are in danger; this is very real. It always has been, but in such a systemic, brainwashing, perverse way — and so publicly? Nevermind all of that, because that is unproductive. It is unproductive to squabble over what is undeniably true. So what does it mean to be a woman who was once a girl? To raise girls? To transition to girlhood? To work for a sisterhood? What are binaries and boundaries and genders and what is a rainbow, really? I mean, scientifically, what the fuck is a rainbow doing because I actually don’t know. I am too busy girling.

I can ask a computer about rainbows, I suppose. Rephrase. I can press buttons on a device powered by electricity and satellites and the answer will come. Just the press of a button! The ease! The convenience! Oh, the knowledge at our fingertips! We are just pressing buttons. All we are doing is pressing buttons. Or swiping. Oh my dear, and how much do we love swiping and scrolling! DON’T SWIPE NOW. Stay. I dare you, yes, I am going to be this direct with you. Stay. Read. Please. I need you. No, I don’t. But girling is more fun in gaggles. Get lost here…

“But, Holly!” you say. Yes I know, it is so satisfying to feel that silky glass beneath our sanded down fingerprints. I have been sleeping with my phone lately. Parenting with it between my face and my children’s, because they are sticky and annoying and loud, and my phone is silky. That bend in my right pinky from balancing it cannot exist without children dying in mines on the other side of the world. This is not a thought I can TURN OFF, but still I am addicted. 

Girling is the anti-AI. the anti-industry. the anti-history. the anti-hero. Girling is a commitment to play and to make mistakes. I am wrong, contradictory, paradoxical — always in threes — close to a rhyme — can’t — complete — thought — without…. aesthetic. Interrupting play, letting the play be explaining the play. 

Example: You are a fish, and I am a walrus, except I don’t have those long teeth-things or a whisker-beard, ‘cuz I’m a pretty walrus, so I have the eyelashes, and you just have gills, like all fish, you are just a fish, but your gills are, like, really glittery, kind of, but not too much, I’m still the pretty walrus, and we are both allergic to water so we’re going to die. 

Girling. That is girling. 

What’s next?