I am a 38-year-old girl

This is my own prompt and I wrote this piece two years ago so I’m actually 40 now. But nothing has changed much. 

I am a 38-year-old girl. It’s strange but I never considered myself a woman. I mean, I am quite mature mentally but somehow the label didn’t feel right. I think of myself as female or else a girl. Never as a woman. It might have something to do with the face in the mirror. I look more or less the same since Grade 6? I probably looked the same before that as well but I distinctly remember that one day in grade 6 I looked in the mirror and all of a sudden I saw my adult features coalesce on a child’s face. Not pretty and not ugly, plain ordinary features, I thought then. Then I put the thought away and didn’t actually think about my looks again. It wasn’t one of my assets. That would be my intellect. 

I am a 38-year-old girl. 38 years old but still a girl. Perhaps part of it has to do with sexual maturity? I don’t mean in a physical or biological sense. I mean mentally or perhaps psychologically? I asked Mum one day whether she had ever fallen in love. She said no. Well, there you have it, I took after her in that, whatever you call it. The two of us lean way on the rational side, which makes it hard for us to fall in love. I once heard on a dating show that you need to feel impulsive to start developing feelings. Well, reason is a great counterbalance for impulses. So perhaps that’s why. It’s not that I’ve never been impulsive. Just that I can count the occasions I’ve been impulsive on one hand: shopping two or three times and saying yes straight away when my best friend asked me to be her bridesmaid. 

I am a 38-year-old girl. I’m trying to reconnect with my childhood. Not all of it. Mostly hobbies. I’ve still got 6 jigsaw puzzles, unopened, waiting for their blue dust to be shaken out. Ravensburger puzzles, fine quality but with lots of blue dust that flutter out from the back. Japanese jigsaws were better in that respect, didn’t have dust coming off them. My best friend sold me a set a few years ago. I still prefer Disney puzzles- I like the vibrant colours. But I have branched out a little to buildings and one ocean life. 

I am a 38-year-old girl. I have my eyes on a game I was addicted to once- Where in the World is Carmen Santiago? I shouldn’t have been- I suck at geography. And that’s the crux of the game: chasing criminals around the world via hints dropped that test your knowledge of geography. Anyway, I checked it out on Steam- I think it’s now considered an educational game. I plan to actually buy it for my own birthday present, for successfully building a 8 hour writing-related routine. 

I am a 38-year-old girl. I just watched the Smurfs, all three movies, the day before yesterday. The Smurfs was my favourite cartoon from Grade 1 up to Grade 3 maybe? I don’t actually remember much except the basic gist. It was a revelation to me that Smurfette was actually created by Gargamel. Then again, it was the same when I watched Beauty and the Beast live-action. I did not remember the castle being stormed, only all the music and animated household objects.