i think every young person

experiences a second youth

in their 20s where they rediscover

all the things that brought them joy

when they were younger, and i don’t

think anybody experiences that more

than those of us who were teenage girls.

we spend the better part of a decade

being condescended to because of …

well, because of everything,

and our every move, interest, and idea

is belittled and picked apart by boys

and men and even our own mothers,

who usually don’t know any better.

so we get to be 20, 21, 22,

and suddenly we own stuffed animals again,

and start dressing the way we want to,

not for anybody else, and we

blast taylor swift and harry styles

and read smutty romance novels,

and it’s like we are finding ourselves

all over again, because in many ways,

we are.

we had this piece of us—

the joyful piece, the curious piece,

yes, the childish piece—

completely destroyed.

and we spent the better part of 19 thinking

we did not deserve to get it back.

when i came out on the other side,

i smiled. i laughed. i even grieved.

and then i put on taylor swift

and rememorized her discography.

and when people scoff at me now,

i tell them to go fuck themselves.

—the recovery of the teenage girl

when my mother and i fight,

it is like screaming at a mirror.

i do not know which of us

hates that more.

—one and the same

sometimes i say things

the same way my mother says them,

down to the way my eyebrows move,

and my best friend laughs at me and says

you sound just like your mom right now,

do you know that?

when it first started happening,

it was scary, perhaps even insulting,

because i’d spent so much of my teenage years

trying to become different from her.

i’d seen the worst of her by then,

because what else are the ages of 12 to 18

but a parade of all the flaws your loved ones carry,

particularly all the flaws they tried to hide

or you didn’t notice when you were younger.

i’d started to pick up on her anger,

the things that made her bitter,

the parts of her i pinpointed and thought to myself,

that is something i would like to not do.

she will not give me that.

but of course,

we all turn into our parents eventually,

and now i am adorned in her fingerprints:

my facial expressions, my sense of humor,

the speed at which i cry for reasons good and bad,

all of which i see as good things

now that i am not a teenager and not so angry.

and i suppose, despite my best efforts,

that i picked up some of her that i wish i hadn’t,

that i know she wishes i hadn’t either,

because she has told me

how much she hates those parts of her too.

at the end of it, though,