The Little Girl: her Creation, her Fire, and her Bite
when i was a little girl i had a little wooden bed frame for my little girl bed. and one day i got so angry at my mommy and my daddy and the entire incomprehensibly large world that i bit into it. i stuck my little girl teeth into the wooden pole on the lower corner of the bed frame as hard as i little-girl-could. and there were teeth marks deep into the wood for as long as that bed existed to me.
i got in a lot of trouble. i can’t remember if my dad had built that bedframe, or just painted it white, and whether he’d painted it at the beginning– or, not until later, not until after, as a way to attempt covering up the little girl Bite of little girl anger. but one reason i got in a lot of trouble was because Daddy Worked So Hard And Now It’s Ruined. i can’t remember if he built it but even if he didn’t build it with his hands he still built it with his money which of course little girl me could never understand.
i’m writing about this now because i think it’s the first memory i have of being angry– really angry, of course– the kind of anger that only little girls have. i’m sure i was angry before then but it’s the earliest memory that has been able to stick through the years. i was probably somewhere between four and eight. and the memory of all this is so vague that i barely feel able to believe it. i think i remember the moment of anger– being a little girl with her little girl limbs inside of her little girl pajamas and being forced into her little girl floral-printed pink bedsheets and being so stuck being so goddamn fucking stuck that all she could do was take the strongest part of her little girl body and dig it as deep into her little girl prison as she could. i think i remember that. the anger and the little girl Bite. the feeling of wooden resistance against my little girl teeth and pushing pushing pushing as the only sort of freedom i could create for myself. but maybe i just remember how angry They were, Mommy and Daddy, when they heard me screaming and groaning and moaning into the post of the bed frame, and the door clicked open and the light from the hallway, the light from the Adult World Of Nighttime, shone too brightly right onto me– how angry they were when they saw me with my little girl anger Right Fucking There. but maybe i actually just remember the months afterward, the months turning into years, the slow years of growing older in cute little small town El Segundo in Los Angeles county right underneath LAX, the years of growing older and the Bite still being there. every time i walked past it, every time i went to bed, as a reminder of that little girl anger. the shadows of the Bite still showing through the layers of Daddy’s Pure White Paint. the years of my mother re-noticing it once in a while and saying off handedly but with a slight passive aggression:
My Little Girl Do You Remember When You BIT YOUR BEDFRAME. HOW CRAZY IS THAT. YOU WERE SO CRAZY FOR NO REASON. NEVER FORGET HOW CRAZY YOU WERE. because. you will never be crazy like that again. i mean. my darling. frankly you were pushing it before but the older you get the less and less acceptable it will be. haha. it’s okay darling. you were just a little girl. but just. don’t. forget.
((almost as if maybe her Little Girl still lived inside her with the Need to Bite.))
i think i’m realizing that when LittleGirlHood is forced onto a person then that Little Girl Anger never really leaves them. it lives inside them, my little girl burning up all hot in my belly all the time. angry because she never chose this. angry because she didn’t even ever choose to exist, she was just created by the Adults who decided that the Little Girl should be there. who decided that That’s Who She Is. A Girl. and as much as i hate it and as much as i want to scrape it all out of me– as much as i want to scrape Her out of me– i know that i never can. They created her and i hate that but at the same time i’m stuck with her forever as a part of me. i’m stuck keeping her forever. it’s just not possible to throw Her away. and also. if anything. maybe her Little Girl Anger burns a little brighter and harder than the Thing that They had intended to create. and maybe, just maybe, She deserves for me to at least Let Her Burn. Burning For Herself End No One Else. Freedom.
i’m not sure if i’ve ever written anything that has led me to cry whilst typing. but this did. so i think that that might be worth saying. it also might be worth saying that i’m three-fourths of a bottle deep into a fancy french rose. because, this bottle and bottles like these are sometimes the only way i can numb myself away from the outside poking into me. and after writing this i’m wondering if this feeling of the outside poking into me is the feeling of a stick poking into my little girl fire. maybe. it’s possible. anyways i’d also like to say also that i was inspired to write this after reading a short chapter in Lidia Yuknavitch’s “The Chronology of Water” titled “A Burning” where she writes about her own sort of little girl fire. and right now i’m too tipsy to really tell if this is any good or makes any sort of sense. but i think that it felt really good to get out of me especially because i think i had no idea that it was something within me in the first place.
thanks for reading this if you did. i know i’m really inconsistent when it comes to posting things on here but i’m starting to realize that creating things like for example the words on this silly little blog that no one reads— are literally the most important things in my life and the things that i need to try hardest to preserve. or else, somehow, i don’t feel like myself. so, i’m trying. really hard. so, hopefully, you’ll continue to see a little more of me.
This is SO good dude holy fuck
so good