![]() The chorus captures the curious excitement I feel for the unknown: “My certainty is wild, weaving / For you, I am a child, believing / You lay beside me sleeping on a plane / In the future.” ![]() That’s why I love “Certainty” by Big Thief. I like to think about all the people I have yet to meet or the people I have already met who will pop back up later in life and surprise me. I believe that having the opportunity to fall in love–with friends or with partners–is part of what makes Lucy’s black hole benevolent. Her lyrics explore how falling in love can reawaken the younger pieces of yourself you forgot you were still holding onto. I haven’t been able to stop listening to “Seasick” by Naomi Alligator. Joanna Sternberg talks about working to become a better version of yourself, while Sharon Von Etten and Angel Olsen yearn for the past. Madi Diaz sings about the difficulties of being a new person in an old place. The middle section of the playlist takes you through the hardest and best part of growing up: learning to accept yourself. We can’t help but lose our minds when she sings, “Remember when we said / We’d never have children / I’m holdin’ your baby / Now that we’re older.” We will inevitably watch our friends, who we met as girls, turn into mothers. A close friend, who I have been lucky enough to grow up with, sent me it. “Spring” by Angel Olsen is a very special song to me. “BIGSHOT” by the Lumineers is for the things she used to dream about. “New Soul” is for your middle school self, who is still wearing those wire-framed glasses and doing her best to figure out how to accept her growing body. (It was on my hot pink iPod nano in 2009). The playlist begins with “New Soul,” one of my first favorite songs. In this playlist, I tried to capture the complex feelings that come with growing up. ![]() It doesn’t have to be scary, and for the first time, I think I am learning to accept that. Like a black hole, the future is an unavoidable unknown, but Lucy is right. I was too freaked out by the concept of black holes to realize that Lucy uses the adjective “benevolent” to describe them. Lucy Dacus puts this feeling into words when she describes the future as a “benevolent black hole” at the end of her song “Cartwheel.” When I first listened to the song, the line scared me. I am falling asleep in a dorm room.īut what comes after that? Can’t see it. I am opening my locker for the first time. I have always been able to visualize my next steps. Up until now, my life has been laid out for me. People keep asking me where I see myself one year from now, and truthfully, I don’t know. I’ve just been adding to who she once was. I may have lost “the kind of radiance you only have at 17,” but that doesn’t mean that my 17-year-old self is lost, too. I used to look at growing up as an uncontrollable loss, but I am starting to realize that growing older is about adding not losing. ![]() I like the older, more confident person I am now. And even though I don’t want to grow up, I don’t want to be her either. I know that I am not the same girl who arrived in Gambier, Ohio three years ago. It is hard to think that these moments are the first of my last on this campus. We have impromptu sleepovers and watch dark midwestern storm clouds erase pink sunsets. I make spreadsheets during the week and attend themed costume parties with friends on the weekends. Right now, I am spending the summer on my college campus, working my first big girl job. I want to turn 3 and a half over and over again. I like playing pretend, and I get anxious when my siblings talk about how old I will be when they graduate college. On my 11th birthday, I cried because I realized I wouldn’t be able to use my hands to tell people how old I was anymore. One of the most terrifying parts of growing up is realizing that you can never really know what is going to happen next. You look in the mirror, and you welcome her. Maybe you’re happy to be this older version of yourself. When you look in the mirror, do you see your face? Is it the same face you’ve always had? Maybe it’s thinner, stronger, more tired. Do you remember how we used to be little kids? With baby fat protecting the veins on the backs of our hands and the bones beneath our cheeks. ![]()
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