5.5
June 18, 2018

An Ode to “Nice” Girls.

Our truth is that we teeter atop a constant precipice of blazing boldness and utter fear.

We tiptoe a fine line of longing to be unapologetically passionate, raw, and subversive, and comfortingly cordial, gentle, and “nice.”

Our favorite colors are witchcraft black and angelic pink.

We unabashedly groove to both bass-bottomed gangster rap and dreamy, trippy synth pop.

We rise each day to blaze a trail of fiery transformation, holding our flags high in the sky for all to see and follow. At the end of each day we want to hide in our rabbit holes reading about herbal remedies and making tinctures and potions that heal the world.

Our favorite flower is the optimistic tulip, but we find strength in the weeping willow.

We sing fierce songs of freedom, injustice, and equality out loud, while humming soft songs of sweetness and peace and love to ourselves.

We’re both Dorothy and Oz the Great and Powerful.

We long to scream wisdom from the rooftops, as long as we don’t hurt anyone’s feelings.

We relate to the women of both “Girls” and “Golden Girls.”

We want harmony and balance, but we don’t want anyone to tell us what to do.

We get a thrill by telling arrogant people off with a witty sarcastic remark, and then feel heavy remorse because we wish we hadn’t created such a divide.

We are warriors for women’s rights, but we’ve also been mean girls and recovering bulimics.

We want someone to love us completely while we love them utterly, but don’t want to be engulfed by the heady perfume and fluorescent distraction of romance.

We admire both Charles Bukowski and Simone de Beauvoir as equals.

We don’t care what the hell you think of us, but we want you to love and worship us just the same.

We roll our eyes when older men date much younger women, but find ourselves attracted to much younger men.

We bow to the bodies of “real women” while secretly dreaming of what it must be like to be a supermodel.

We want to be adored as much as we want to be respected.

We worship the Goddess on our knees, but also find Jesus to be a true prophet of love.

We’re as silly as we are intense, and we are as insane as we are sane.

Our ultimate truth is that we are lovers and fighters, saints and whores, angels and demons, divine spirits and hot messes.

We envelop each contradiction passionately, balancing them equally like tightrope walkers in the wind—frustrated and wondering how the hell we got here, but also awestruck and loving the view.

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Erika Anne Soerensen

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