CCA Class of ‘16

Tulane University

1.  “Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family.”

God, my legs are cold.

No, they’re not. Just exposed, which is new. Terrifying.

Empowering.

It’s March, almost time for my sixteenth birthday, and just as I’ve outgrown kiddie menus and hot pink the past year, I’ve shed my jeans and faux-varsity jacket for today.

I’m wearing a dress. Blue, floral, shortshortshort with tiny, itty-bitty straps that would be useless if we didn’t live in San Diego where, even though it’s hardly 9:30 AM, the sun has already warmed the staircase I’m standing on. I like to think the sun is glowing behind me, giving me an ethereal crown like the gods in those Renaissance paintings I love so much—

Because, after all, I feel ethereal today. It’s hard for me to truly accept the double takes my friends do when I see them, here in this A-line dress, embracing femininity for a change. They're used to seeing jeans under jacket under a Killers or Bastille or Panic at the Disco shirt, and however shocking the dress is for me, they must feel it too.

But I don't think it's bad shocking. It's a “Zeus happened to be smiling at me today and accidentally removed all the negative ions from my hair” shocking. Not a lightning strike blasting through my bones or a foot in a too-cold shower. Just something a bit new. A Renaissance of my own.

It was my idea, of course, to wear the dress. I thought it would be another step in my recovery - I was ready to outgrow child-sized meals and quit counting my ribs and begin eating healthily again; I was ready to transform from an awkward freshman into someone who knew how to embody confidence. I was tired of not knowing what pretty, those ever-elusive six letters felt like; and even though I was scared down to my exposed knees at the thought of wearing the dress, I thought it might teach me how to be confident.

I was right, of course. I can’t stop twirling on the stairs and fingering the lace on the bottom, touching my torso as if to say to myself you are doing this and you are doing this well.

It was different to reject my jeans and put them away in spring when the rest of my class did - but different is another word for growth, and I was growing into more than just a size 4 or 6 (who knows, I stopped stressing about those tags ages ago).

Different. Not bad.

I go home and order three more dresses before anyone can stop me.

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