When Peter Lost Wendy

You’ll never not know the feeling of the first time. The moment you sense the distance from your mothers embrace on the first day of school, your little shoes entering a room full of conventions and rules separate from your home. The first time you kissed someone and they kissed you back. Your eyes closed, your body against another, a jolt in your heart, the crossing of a line. Or the first time your heart was truly broken; so relentless that it seemed the night would never end. The moments that change you, shift you, and carve you, pushing your limits and boundaries, sending you out the door, down the street, and on a new path never to return to the old self. Like time marching forward or the expansion of the universe, there is no contending with it. This is life. This is growing up.

I was eleven when I got my first period and a year before that was when I had to start wearing bras; both moments where I wept bitter tears to my mother, willing her to make it stop. I couldn't reconcile that I was one of the first girls to enter puberty in my grade. I didn't want it unlike some of the other girls who welcomed the change with grace. Before that, I was a small child, confident, bubbly, and always aiming to be the center of attention. But then, out of nowhere, my feet grew three sizes and my brothers started calling me "clown feet." Then my shoulders broadened and two bumps on my chest appeared. Suddenly I was taller than all the boys in school, seemingly over night. My pants started shrinking while my body ballooned and I had to adopt new practices like wearing deodorant and taking calculated bathroom breaks to change my pads. Everything hurt and nothing made sense; I felt like Pinnochio morphing into a donkey and for the first time, I felt shy and embarrassed.

When boys go through puberty, they automatically are more accepted by their families and peers for their height and new strength, because now, they are men; ready to serve and be served. When girls go through puberty, they are ostracized and othered. Her body becomes the subject of discussion, either by criticism or praise, and her womanhood is something to be feared for the very reactions it might cause which could lead to a dreadful pregnancy. She's constantly being reminded that the male species wants nothing but to take advantage of her and should that happen, it will be all her fault. During this time I was told by teachers that I was forbidden to wear tank tops because it showed my bra straps, which to them, was problematic because "boys can't help themselves." Puberty is the time when the world looks at you differently and thus, you start to look at the world differently. Playtime, story time, and sleepovers all take on new meaning, a warped form bridging innocence to impending adulthood. As everyone became hyper focused on my body and appearance, so did I, and for the first time, I felt shame. As a result, I no longer wished to stand out or be the center of attention. Instead, I just wanted to blend in. I wanted to fade away.

I've read that puberty is so transformative because it is the single most accelerated and rapid aging process that we will ever go through in our lifetime, which is why I think, at the core, it upset me so much. I always considered myself to be a Peter Pan; never wanting to grow up, never wanting to die. Experiencing the shifts in my body and the world around me meant that time was slipping, my childhood was gone, and that I was one stage closer to the end. In a sense, for the first time, whether I knew it or not, I felt my mortality. The shame turned to hatred in my teens when I began to feel completely separate from my body; that it and I were two different entities. I cloaked myself in baggy clothes and stomached the remarks and leering of my growing chest, taking the proverbial jabs that socially placed me in a box that was different than those girls. The one's whose beauty is but conventional and non controversial. The acceptable ones, the chosen ones. However, I believe it's in these eras of our coming of age that we discover, or perhaps tap into, deep parts of our being that can be our greatest resource. What we learn to be a power or weapon we can wield. Like Pan, what I found and what I felt for the first time was my rebellious spirit.

In the last years of high school, in attempt to gain control of my body, I parodixically fell into a deep pool of unhealthy habits. Weight loss competitions, 4 am workouts, fad diets, starving and binging, binging and starving. After school was over, my sleep suffered, I became unfocused and my weight dropped so low that I ended up in the hospital. At the doctors request, I was sent to a treatment center where I would remain under professional care for a few months. Here I had to learn to nourish myself properly and address the reasons that sent me there. But this place wasn't some swanky-holistic center. The beds were made of rubber, the windows had bars, and my roommate was a schizophrenic. Outside media was prohibited and we were only allowed to bathe and go to the bathroom with an orderly standing watch at the door. When Christmas came around, I wanted to go home. I had gained weight, missed my family, and felt that I had acquired everything I could from the program, but the doctors thought otherwise. Upon requesting my release, I was yet again shamed and sent to the directors office. People struggling with eating are usually treated as addicts and addicts hear the constant rhetoric that they are "powerless" to their addiction. I firmly stand against this notion. In fact, it's the opposite, because what this notion fails to acknowledge is that when an "addict" sets her mind to something, she becomes obsessed and nothing will stop her. She actually has all the power, it's just merely her choice what she decides to go after. With my bags packed and my mom parked outside ready to collect me, I sat in that office to listen to Dr. Graff's final words to me as she looked me straight in the eye and said "You aren't any better, and I just know that you will either end up back here or dead." I often look back to this moment in my life and I wonder if Dr. Graff is the meanest person alive, or a complete genius. Maybe she meant every word she said, or maybe, she saw my true essence and decided to challenge my rebellion knowing well that by making that indictment that I would be damn sure that she would never be right about me. Ever. That I would do the exact opposite and commit to my health and well being and that I would come out better on the other side. That I would never give in to her or her merry band of pirates. I choose to believe the latter.

Even through all my growing pains, I was always rich in friendship; something that I never take for granted even to this day. In life, as we grow up, the splitting of ourselves between who we are and what the world wishes us to be starts to blur. Time speeds up, seasons become cloudy and formless, years slip away, and our survival overshadows those pivotal times of reinvention that so often occur in our adolescence. Back when in a few short months you could emerge completely changed, especially in the defining moments of growth between May and September. Can you remember? How almost nothing is as sweet as those that we lived in the eternal summers. For me, it was my friends and it was the summer of 2009.

The previous storm had passed, the sun was shining, and everything felt limitless. I spent each day with my best friends, from sun up to sun down, wandering the canyons, gazing at the stars, laughing our asses off, and living within an infinite bond. As my self perception changed and my confidence grew, I found that certain aspects of my life simply didn't fit anymore; namely of which, the relationship with my first boyfriend, my first love. I decided to end things with him one warm summer night a top a hill and I never looked back. I mourned the ending for merely a couple days until I settled into the heart of freedom and continued with my summer voyage. With more time and more open space, I was able to find depth in other relationships, especially with K*, my long time high school buddy. When everyone else was busy, we spent time listening to records, hitting golf balls, and making silly songs in his garage. We were together all the time and naturally, we became best friends.

That July fourth, all of us decided to go swimming and try magic mushrooms for the first time. This day would mark another first and crucial moment in my life. After years of hiding my body, it was the first time I wore a bikini in public, allowing others to see me. As I walked into the pool, I saw everyone, including K do a double take on me, shocked that there had been anything under those layers that I used to conceal myself with all along. I felt the purity of their safety and I couldn't have been more at peace. Later, while on shrooms, we watched fireworks from an oak tree that we all thought was made of velvet.

Towards the end of summer, K began to exhibit a marked change in his behavior. He started drinking heavily, acting sloppy, and picking fights, mostly with me. One night he caused a scene so ugly in front of my house that the others began to think an intervention was in order, and everyone believed I should be the one to do it. Before that could even happen, I received a text from K asking me to meet him under the velvet oak tree. Both of us shielding the expression of our eyes beneath sunglasses, I walked towards him, where he steadily apologized for the previous night and felt the need to explain his actions. "Vanessa," he said, "I've been in love with you for a very long time and I know you don't feel the same way about me. So at night, when we say goodbye, I have to do what I can to forget." I was heavy with guilt and even more so with sadness, because he was right. I didn't feel the same. I loved him like a brother and a best friend, nothing more. That day when we said goodbye, I knew nothing would ever be the same again.

In the tale, the Lost Boys don't find Neverland; they run away to it and they run to forget. We will always remember the first time, yet, we never give mention to the last time, because often, the last time goes unnoticed...simply because, we grow up. We don't remember the last time we rode bikes with our friends, or climbed a tree, or played make believe. We can't recall that last conversation, the last glance, or when we stopped believing in fairies. I sometimes wonder if he really was in love with me or if he just loved the version of me that existed between the months of that spring and fall. That season where I became a woman and what I believe, in retrospect, was the last summer of my childhood.

I always thought I was a Peter, but really, I'm a Wendy. Wendy keeps the memories but she chooses to make new ones. She accepts the good times just as she does the bad, and in truth, she will never forget Peter, because on some nights, she still waits for him. And she can still hear him crow.