Member-only story
This Is Us
Too Big For This World
I understood, even as a young girl, that I was much too much.
I was too wild, too exuberant, asked too many questions, and paid far too little attention. I stared out the windows of my elementary school and imagined myself hanging upside-down from the trees, staring back into the classroom. I would not hear the teacher calling my name. Gwen. Gwen! GWEN!
On the playground, I would run fast and peg balls at the boys, smacking them in the head with red rubber. I would make wild dashes to release my teammates from the jail at the end of the dodge ball court, screaming and whooping, imagining I was a cowgirl releasing all the ponies from the corral, freeing them into the wilderness where they rightfully belonged. I’d ignore Mr. Preston’s whistle, faint and distant in my ears, as I rode away across the blacktop on my Appaloosa.
If you are a girl in America, by the time you are ten, eleven, twelve, your legs sprout up under you and your hips begin to fill out. You grow unstoppable like a dandelion, and you quickly learn that you are becoming too much girl, too much woman, too round, too big. You try to suck it all in and confine yourself. You try to avoid catching anyone’s attention, avoid offending sensibilities, avoid anybody’s gaze, avoid anybody’s grab, but you grow and…
