The Abyss of of a Daughter’s Teenage Vagina…

Listen up. Puberty is real and it’s frightening and I’m fucking not ok. The random Clearasil pads everywhere, the dull razors, and the greasy faced pimpled out mood swinging dicks that came into MY home and stole the sweet angelic babies from me. My daughter has tattooed on her door how I am ruining her life. It’s permanently locked and no one is EVER allowed in so I’m not even sure that she is breathing except for mealtimes when she comes out to regale me about how I am FAILING as a parent for not anticipating her dietary needs as they change on a whim based on her new cycle because did I mention in this run-on sentence that my 11-year old has her fucking period? Yeah. You read that right. I feigned menses for years because it didn’t come until basically I was ready to move out and start a family and here she is with a doll house in her room and has to be reminded to brush her damn teeth every and stop allowing her slime science projects to dry out on her expensive school uniforms every day but has now been equipped with the capacity for childbearing. I can write campaigns about GMOs and hormones in the meat that is evoking puberty before double digits, but it doesn’t matter anymore. It’s here and it’s ugly and I hate it.

My son… The slimy-mouthed gummy pimpled out sex fiend has sent his 11 year old GIRLFUCKINGFRIEND suggestive texts and has defiled every sock in our home. He smells. He’s angry. He curses like a sailor and he knows EVERYTHING ever and he’s always un-showered looking/smelling and so so angry. My baby. My first born. He now has a permanent sneer on his face because everything is dumb and sucks and if he rolls his eyes any further up into his head, he will need to have surgery to re-align them to true form.

I’m not ok.

Wait, it gets worse…

I had to assist my daughter with a ‘down there’ treatment the other night and I saw her lady parts and almost died. She’s hormonal. She’s come to me with everything and I haven’t ever flinched… but NOW… OMG, now…? I changed that girl’s diaper for three fucking years and she suddenly waves her teenager parts in my face and I’m just... changed. First it was stumbling across my son’s manly manhood when he beckoned for a towel after his shower and now her womanly woman parts?! I am not sure that it’s more womanly than anyone else’s womanhood  because frankly the only time I’ve ever seen one up close, I was bi-toxicated, as any youthful female tends to be when experimenting with tequila.

I’m holding the box of yeast relief and suddenly reading directions as though I haven’t ever applied this science to my own afflictions… but I’m searching for clues or instructions that forbade a mother from performing this act on her daughter or at least have some sort of age restriction where I can back out and give her the usual “eat yogurt and take this homeopathic vitamin.” Alas, no. This IS the homeopathic version. Safe for all ages. This “applicator” is a small fishing pole with a bath bead on the end of it that I’m supposed to insert into her.  I’m like trying to do this without breaking her hymen and I’m not even sure she’s old enough to have grown one yet to be broken.

I wear a lab coat. I’ve been to autopsies by the dozen. Today, I am an anatomy tard and I’m sweating and nauseous. I’m instructing her how to smear the cream part on the outside and meanwhile it’s like six inches from my face and she pulls it back for inspection and I’m like... dude... I’ve haven't seen a vagina so close… SO Sober... and belonging to my kid who isn’t 2. There’s got to be a statute of limitations on this stuff. But who else would do it? Her dad? No. Some other super cool mom? No. And I can’t teach her shame regarding her vag, so I am basically like “whatever, no biggie” about it while inside: dead. Why? Because it's suddenly real to me... Someone else is going to see this as something other than my baby's "hoo-hoo" and I'm not ready for it. Ever. 

I’m fuming to friends who have young girls and warning them about this tragedy: the realization that your kid's "pee pee parts" are evolving into what someone else will find in any other capacity, other than an exit space for waste. One mother says I should do stand-up. I think to myself that if my daughter were only standing up, I wouldn’t have peered through the abyss of my infant daughter’s teenage vagina. “That’s going to be the title of my next book”, I think.

“Why is the bar mitzvah-age at the absolute most awkward time of their lives??” my friend asks. Seriously. I’m pondering this while my son’s gummy slimy smile makes every asshole remark he makes all that more gross. I saw his penis last week and almost died. A man's penis. On my infant twelve year old. He was self-conscious about it. I reminded him how I have seen a hundred penises of the adult variety and I, alone, created his and changed is diapers for 3 years so I’m immune. I was wrong, he became not so concerned and now I saw it and I'm so perplexed. It’s not the actual man-part... It’s like, the startling realization that he knows he has that thing and other girls now do, too and he’s going to use it for stuff beyond watering the plants outside or painting my shower walls with his pee-fiti and "it" is yelling at me that he isn’t a little baby anymore. When did that happen?

What do I prescribe for you people with young kids? Pre-therapy? Yes. Get medicated from like 9-14 years of your son/daughter’s life... and then increase the meds from 14-18. I’m not so sure 18-30 is out of the woods either.

So, basically life as we know it is over.

I am creating a ribbon… like they use for cancer/suicide/school shooting awareness... This is for “puberty awareness” only it’s brown and blood stained and comes pre moistened and ripped like a Kaddish sash.  I’m giving them out as bar mitzvah party favors.  

There’s no point to this. I just thought if I wrote about it, I’d feel better. I don’t. As informative as this TED talk is, it’s still happening.

It’s the flannel around the waist, black nails, loud music, pierced tongue- angsty rebels we all were and forgot about- coming back and screaming at us… only not in Tori-scented candle canvases creating little literati’s, no.

It’s worse than that.

It’s psychosocial climate change.

We are all doomed.


Time is going too fast. Stop growing...