Help, I’m Growing Up: A Playlist for Life’s Transitions
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. 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. Maybe you’re happy to be this older version of yourself. You look in the mirror, and you welcome her. Or maybe you mourn for her. For what she has been through. For what she can’t see coming. One of the most terrifying parts of growing up is realizing that you can never really know what is going to happen next.
I have never been good at growing up. 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. I like playing pretend, and I get anxious when my siblings talk about how old I will be when they graduate college. I don’t want to be 27. I don’t want to be 21. I want to turn 3 and a half over and over again.
Right now, I am spending the summer on my college campus, working my first big girl job. I make spreadsheets during the week and attend themed costume parties with friends on the weekends. We have impromptu sleepovers and watch dark midwestern storm clouds erase pink sunsets.
It is hard to think that these moments are the first of my last on this campus. I know that I am not the same girl who arrived in Gambier, Ohio three years ago. And even though I don’t want to grow up, I don’t want to be her either. I like the older, more confident person I am now. 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 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’ve just been adding to who she once was.
People keep asking me where I see myself one year from now, and truthfully, I don’t know. Up until now, my life has been laid out for me. Four years of middle school. Four years of high school. Four years of college. I have always been able to visualize my next steps. I am opening my locker for the first time. I am falling asleep in a dorm room.
But what comes after that? Can’t see it. 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 was too freaked out by the concept of black holes to realize that Lucy uses the adjective “benevolent” to describe them. Like a black hole, the future is an unavoidable unknown, but Lucy is right. It doesn’t have to be scary, and for the first time, I think I am learning to accept that.
In this playlist, I tried to capture the complex feelings that come with growing up. The playlist begins with “New Soul,” one of my first favorite songs. (It was on my hot pink iPod nano in 2009). “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. “BIGSHOT” by the Lumineers is for the things she used to dream about.
“Spring” by Angel Olsen is a very special song to me. A close friend, who I have been lucky enough to grow up with, sent me it. 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.
The middle section of the playlist takes you through the hardest and best part of growing up: learning to accept yourself. Madi Diaz sings about the difficulties of being a new person in an old place. Joanna Sternberg talks about working to become a better version of yourself, while Sharon Von Etten and Angel Olsen yearn for the past. I haven’t been able to stop listening to “Seasick” by Naomi Alligator. Her lyrics explore how falling in love can reawaken the younger pieces of yourself you forgot you were still holding onto. 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.
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. That’s why I love “Certainty” by Big Thief. 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.”
I wanted Maggie Rogers and Phoebe Bridgers to take us out of this transitory phase with “Alaska” and “Graceland Too.” One of my favorite lyrics of all time comes from Maggie Roger’s “Alaska”: “And I walked off you / And I walked off an old me.” Nothing is more beautiful than freeing yourself by daring to move forward. Phoebe Bridgers’ friends and bandmates, Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus, sing the harmonies at the end of “Graceland Too.” Their friendship adds power to the lyrics: “Ate a sleeve of saltines on my floor, and I knew then // I would do anything you want me to / I would do anything for you.”
It was important that I capture the power of female friendship in this playlist in addition to the inevitable growing pains of girlhood. “Any Party” by Feist is a special song to me. I love how the line, “You know I’d leave any party for you,” captures the care the singer has for her friend. Recently, I did leave a party for a good friend and sat with her on Facetime until she felt better. Friendship is one of the best parts of growing up. It reminds you that you are not alone. Growing up means that you get to watch the people you care about learn to love themselves. It means that you get to tell them you’re proud of the person they have become. I have always loved the song “Old Friends” by Simon and Garfunkel for this reason. Nothing could be luckier than sitting next to an old friend “on a park bench like bookends,” thinking “how terribly strange to be 70.”
I wanted to end the playlist with “Galileo” by the Indigo Girls, a song one of my best friends introduced me to via CD last fall. It will always remind me of this season of life, but more importantly, “Galileo” reminds me to be patient and excited for what is to come. Because what could be more exciting than waiting to see how long it takes for our souls to get it right?