graphic by ella sylvie
My freshman year of college, I was super conceptually obsessed with that Britney Spears song, “I’m not a girl, not yet a woman.” Despite never actually taking the time to listen to the song, my obsession probably stems in part from an appreciation for the melodrama of Britney’s statement. Throughout the next four years of college, I continued to not listen to the song and instead elected to quote its title to myself and others whenever I found myself plowing through the realities of adolescent angst. I am a big believer in the power of a phase, and almost every single phase that I went through during my time at University was underlied by the ambiguity of not being a girl or a woman but instead being some secret and highly venerated third thing.
When I first found grain of salt, I was a freshman navigating my first months at college and going through a very serious — and ultimately regrettable — Twee phase. My self expression in the form of argyle vests and Peter Pan collars was no doubt an attempt to regain control of the stunning series of chaotic events that characterized the early days of my college experience — one She & Him song at a time. Because I had graduated from high school during the pandemic, I was struggling to toe the line between making friends and participating in activities while also feeling like I was protecting my own physical well-being (which was made even harder by the fact that going to college in the South meant that being COVID-safe was largely a battle fought by the individual without mandates from the governing body of the school). As a result of my seemingly self-imposed isolation, I had largely retreated into a largely chronically online existence that allowed me to spend my days lurking in r/Beret without having to interact with too many other people. During my daily doom scroll, I came across an advertisement for the Residency program on gos’s TikTok account.
I decided to apply, despite the fact that my isolation had manifested into a depression that made doing simple tasks incredibly hard. When I got the email stating that my submission had been accepted and that I would be joining the residency program, I was cautiously optimistic about what it might mean for me. Throughout the residency program, I got to work with an amazing cohort of other writers (shout out Abi, Juana and Sarah — hell will freeze over before I unmutual you guys on Instagram) who were into the same niche internet things that I had always liked but had never found a place to discuss them. At just eighteen, I was the baby of the group, and at times I felt a bit intimidated by a group of such intelligent and freaking cool women of color, and I found myself getting a bit of a reprieve from the realities of my depression with every submission of an article or rose-bud-thorn that I completed. Through the residency program, I was able to stimulate an intellectual curiosity inside of myself that I did not even realize still existed, and though I did not realize it at the time, joining grain of salt was my first step towards taking my life back from depression.
After the residency program ended, I ditched the berets in favor of a pair of Loubitons, and the beginning of my Carrie Bradshaw era kicked into high gear. I started writing articles about sex and dating and the psychology of situationships — a subject near and dear to my heart — and even though some of the other faces on the team changed, the killer and inviting content that was being produced did not change even for a second. During this period of my life, I was still pretty chronically online, but in a TBS Loser-Hot Girl way (or at least that’s what I was telling myself) that took up the space in between that Britney was trying to tell us about in the song. Even though this was probably not the healthiest era in my life, my monthly check-ins and biweekly article deadlines kept me from veering into the path of being too Carrie Bradshaw past the point of no return. I had never been in a space that allowed me to speak so openly about being a queer sex-positive feminist, and I could feel myself getting closer and closer to the woman that I might be one day every single time I filled out a grain of salt section code headline (L4 until the day I die, baby!).
I could probably pen at least seven different paragraphs on all of the other phases that I went through during my time as a Staff Writer, but for the purposes of making this a pithy — and not horribly embarrassing — read, I will resist the urge to do so. The important part of all of this is that throughout all of my different phases of being not a girl but also not yet a woman, grain of salt saw me through. So while I won’t bore you with the aforementioned seven paragraphs, I can share that I have been with gos through: three apartments, three exes, two changes of my academic major, the dissolution of two close friendships, three different therapists and five relapses into being Twee (note to the audience: do NOT watch 500 Days of Summer if you are in a moment of weakness and know that you are the kind of person who is at risk of random acts of Zooey Deschanel). While my writing has always been a bit more on the journalistic side, the changes that I was experiencing as a girl, not yet a woman, were evident in the topicality of my writing and my voice as an author, and being a part of a team that does not just validate the radical nature of a phase but embraces it has made every bit of a difference for me as both a writer and a person.
Every year that passed while I was in school, I could feel my voice growing and changing and getting better and more sophisticated. The goscommunity’s reception of my work empowered me to begin taking action on the things that I was writing about with the magazine, and I started organizing within my own community. I changed my major to align with the passion that goshelped me realize lived inside of me, and I spent two years of college in my Girl Boss phase. I was absolutely trucking, and I was incredibly excited to get to share all of my wins with my always supportive grain gang. When my Girl Boss phase started to look suspiciously like a Burnout phase during my Senior year, the lessons that I have learned from personal conversations and the other members of the magazine helped me realize that it is okay to take a step back and prioritize your own health.
Throughout my journey at gos, I have had the pleasure of working with two of the most righteously cool and endlessly interesting writers in the whole wide world. When they are not busy personifying the answer to the question what do you want to be when you grow up, Rita and Faith have also acted as two life-changing mentors who I felt comfortable opening up to — albeit kind of sarcastically — about my health problems. Because Rita and Faith are capital P Professionals, they allowed me to take a leave of absence during the time that I was away, which let me keep lurking in the Slack and stalking the website for new material. I was struggling with my own stuff, but other members of my community were going through the same things, and reading about their experiences made me feel a bit less alone in going through my own. Even though I got pretty busy with recovery and senior year stuff, a part of me always felt like something was missing when I was not writing. I realized that a part of my heart would always be in New York with the home base of the magazine, as well as with all of the people in the beautiful community of free expression and unashamed introspection that Rita and Faith have helped build for all of these years.
Obviously, it kind of sucked to get the message that gos was shutting down right as I was getting to a place in my recovery journey that would allow me to start writing again, but there is something bittersweet about starting my journey with grain of salt and it ending right as I am about to graduate. I have reflected a lot on being chronically online, both in my writing and in my own introspection, and I think that there is something to be said about realizing that there is going to have to be a day where you walk away from the laptop — even if it hurts a little. To have somewhere to go that allows people to coalesce and celebrate as their authentic selves is nothing short of a miracle, and I believe that grain of salt magazine is that kind of miracle. As I contemplate graduation, the end of the magazine and the rest of my life, I face the fact that I still feel as though I am not yet a girl or a woman. However, I am grain of salt, and so are all of you.