My girlhood was one I shared completely with my best friend, Lucy. Wherever she was, I was, and vice versa. We are so joint at the hip that someone recently admitted they thought we were the same person appearing in multiple places at once!Luckily for me, Lucy is also my second cousin, meaning that our friendship went into family time too. Summer holidays were an endless sleepover, deciding whose house to stay at based on who had the nicer sounding dinner. It is hard to overstate how much time we spent together, and I loved every moment.
But growing up there was often a sense that girls could be ‘nasty’ or ‘catty’. I used to hear this from adults all the time. They’d say that teenage girls were jealous and competitive, and that going to an all girls high school must be challenging for these reasons. This really confused me. These traits are not ‘girl traits’. They’re human traits. And dare I say these traits seem to belong to adults more than teenagers. My close friendships with lovely girls like Lucy showed me that this ever-present narrative was wrong.
Lucy is kind, sensitive, curious, understanding and adventurous. She is the kind of person who notices that you’ve stopped to tie your shoe and waits with you. She walks with the slowest walker, offers you endless cups of tea, and makes sure you have enough blankets on your bed. She is the kind of girl who you could go to with anything, and she would never judge you. She was (and even outside of her teen years, is) the absolute antithesis of the negative rhetoric that shrouds the term ‘teenage girl’.
Lucy has inspired me to be proud of what I love and enjoy, and to share it with people. She is always, always in my corner, cheering me on. She is incredibly resilient and brave, and is someone I always try to be more like. When I need strength, I think of her. I think of her zeal for life, her tenacity and perseverance, her open mind, and her sense of adventure.
When I think of girlhood, I think of Lucy.
-Iris C-M.