Every lost girl
That I know
Is over 26.
This random line from my new fav Drake song has been stuck in my head all day.
It was there during the oddly fast economics exam and it was stuck when I was eating my celebratory ‘I finished another prelim’ (vegan) magnum and it was stuck in my head just now when I was trying to write an essay.
And I was wondering why.
Because at first glance, it really is an incoherent string of words that contain no real semblance of sense.
But I just could not stop humming it.
Until Punya asked what I was on about and I had to unpack what exactly it was that my subconscious was trying to tell me.
Every lost girl,
Oh lord. You know it’s getting spicy when I italics the reference to gender.
But it really does make sense, for I see some members of the male species walking around with their little chests puffed and lousy chins high, for they have declared themselves the pinnacle of manhood. No matter false nor distorted their sense of selves seem to be, it always amazes me how men seem to have such confidence and sureness of themselves. It’s highkey gross, but admirable in some aspects nonetheless.
Whereas with us women, girls as Mr not-at-all-constantly-tantrumming Drake has minimised us to be, we are constantly reconstructing and remodelling. Internally and externally. We want to fit the roles in our lives better and serve the world in the best possible way, even if it means to lose what sense of self is built.
Lost. Lost
To have no sense of self is a revolting prospect.
But to have tirelessly constructed that very sense of self, only to lose it is beyond nauseating.
I don’t know if I’m unhealthily attached to my identity, an intangible construct that doesn’t even exist,
Or I’m just proud of the person I am
Because I know just what it took to get here.
But to think, to simply entertain the idea that all that I am, all that I have built and all that I know can be lost due to happenings completely out of my reach,
sends shivers down my spine.
26. 26! 26?
I really thought that once I leave the cesspit that is high school and venture into the real world, I would immediately feel peace and settle in. But, whilst observing adults in their (putrid) natural state alongside Ayisha, I’ve really realised that nothing really changes and that high school is an eternal aspect of the human experience.
So I can sit on my manicured hands and eagerly anticipate my Clooney years, but I must eventually age is an arbitrary digit and means quite literally nothing in the grand scheme of things.
I think this nonsensical line in a random song that I stumbled upon completely out of chance,
stuck with me because I too am indeed a lost girl.
I know who I am (I think), and I’ve figured out where I’m going (a stretch) and how I am going to get there (mostly.)
But I still feel lost, I feel misguided and I feel stupid.
And I didn’t even have to be 26 to feel this way.
Comments