on girlhood and collective experience
<p>It kinda shocked me the first time I looked at the mirror and saw a woman, instead of a girl. Until very recently, and to be specific until my mother asked me to try her engagement dress, I was so convinced I was still living my prolonged puberty years as a 20-something.</p>
<p>I am now the same age she wore this very same dress and got engaged to my father. It is a timeless piece actually; a long, black dress with a cowl neckline. I was joking with her about how I would wear that dress to my master’s graduation ceremony since I was not getting engaged anytime soon. We giggled, made more jokes, laughed, more jokes and more laughter. But when we looked at each other in the mirror, silence filled the house. I expected to see myself, yet what greeted me in the mirror was my mother’s youth, which I had only seen in photographs and looked like a stranger every goddamn time. The realization of people around me having different roles than what I assigned them always intrigued me; the most important one was my mother was a girl once too.</p>
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