Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had been allowed a Barbie doll when I was a little girl. If I had worn pink, and had long hair that I put up in bows and ribbons, and painted my nails with glittery top coats that reflected the sunlight as I basked on the beach in one of those bikinis they make for girls too young to have the assets needed to fill out the top half.

Sometimes I wonder what that girl would have been like, the one who didn’t see the feminine as an insult and insist on being a tomboy, the one who didn’t give boys death threats one year and sit at the bad kids table to offer companionship the next year. If she would have run to a teacher and avoided her first trip to the principal’s office, if she would have sat next to her new friend as he cried to her about the many woes of being hated at seven years old.

Sometimes I wonder about the girl I could have been, if maybe I wouldn’t have experimented with my mother’s makeup while waiting for the bathwater to heat up, putting on foundation and lipstick and blush only to wash it off moments later, scrubbing off the remnants before anyone could discover my greatest secret. If maybe instead I would have watched tutorials on the best ways to apply liquid eyeliner to my top eyelid (pull the skin tight and apply in one clean stroke) to prepare for my first day of middle school, rather than struggle to apply pencil eyeliner on the day of a younger friend’s middle school graduation, applying and reapplying in the silence of my house before walking out the door amidst a cloud of anonymity. If maybe I would have been recognized, rather than passed over briefly before becoming the great shock of the afternoon - the traveling anomaly of the girl who had never worn makeup, finally caring about her personal appearance.

Sometimes I wonder about the girl who would have grown up, how long it would have taken her to get a boyfriend, without the aura of disdain for the male gender; how long it would have taken her to kiss a boy, to hold his hand as they walked in the street. If she might have fallen in love yet, without the cynicism that came from seeing and hearing and living with the reality that boys aren’t as wonderful as they seem. If maybe she might have realized that after one of them broke her heart.

And then sometimes I know who that girl is, the girl who giggles instead of laughs, and spends too much time curling her hair. I know that she wants to fall in love, if she hasn’t already, and that she spends her time reading the gossip rags online that tell her the secrets to the universe, as if she didn’t know them already. She worries about her weight and her height, and the fullness of her eyebrows without caring for the brains underneath all that manufactured beauty.

Sometimes I know who that girl could have been, the one who doesn’t know where she’s going, but knows that she wants to live life to its fullest - she wants to drink and drive and party and kiss and be kissed and walk on the sunshine of the life she expects will come.

Sometimes I think that I could have been that girl if I had been allowed a Barbie doll, and other times I glance at the books I was given in her place, and think that maybe I still am, hidden underneath the glasses and hair and sharp angles I’ve constructed to hide the softness I might have had. And most times I look in the mirror and realize that its enough, and that instead of contemplating the might have beens, I should try and focus on the lines I’m trying to draw underneath my eyes.