For years, I have asked myself, "When am I going to be a woman?" Not a girl, but a woman. Was it the autumn I turned twelve and got my first period? Was it the summer I held a boy's hand for the first time or in the fall when we first kissed? Was it the first time I fell in love?
I wondered when a little girl with her mom would point to me and say, "That woman over there."
Was I a woman when I turned eighteen? A legal adult or an adult child. Was it when I went to college? Was it the first time a man cat-called me? The first time I had sex? Or when I turned twenty-one?
Was I a woman when I graduated college? When my students called me by "Ms." or when my high school biology teacher asked me to call her by her first name? What about when I worked my first nine-to-five job? Will it be when I get married? Buy my first house? When people start calling me "Doctor"?
I think I had it all wrong. I am not sure when Day One of Womanhood began. But I think becoming a woman for me has been less dependent on the way others see me and more dependent on how I have started to view myself. In this exact, but very fleeting moment, I am more sure than ever of who I am, who I want to be and where I want to go. And I think that becoming a woman started when I began to realize just that.
Written with Florence + The Machine playing softly in the background.
