The Spring Hill Kid

I was never, not even once, the cool kid.

My house was never the place to be.

In elementary school, the other neighborhood kids had pools and trampolines, so we spent our afternoons making up games and eating watermelon in their backyards, our sweaty faces glistening as we ran inside for plastic cups of cold water.

In middle school, sleepovers happened at the other girls’ houses, because they had big dens or basements, and tv’s in their bedrooms, and brand name Lays potato chips. We never had Lays potato chips at my house.

In high school, I was usually at Tori’s, where her parents stayed up late and didn’t care if we made noise, and we had the whole upstairs to ourselves. We watched TV or talked all night and slept in so late the sun beat down on us through the windows, and we kicked off the covers and went back to sleep.

The rest of my high school friends lived in Brentwood. They had big, beautiful houses, absent parents, and cars of their own with stereo systems. We would drive to Sonic in Anna’s car with the windows down and the radio blaring, being girls and feeling the freedom of being girls, in each others’ cars, with the windows down, at 17. It was glorious.

But it was never my car, and it was never my house we went back to.

Brentwood was the unspoken territory of our friendships, because it was beautiful and exciting and the City was close, and the boys we liked would be hanging out nearby and things stayed open past 8pm. 

I was never ashamed of my home or my rural neighborhood 30 minutes away. I loved growing up in the rolling hills with room to think and wander, skip rocks and catch crawdads, climb trees and read books. I didn’t want to live in Brentwood, but I wanted my friends to see me. To see my home, and in doing so to somehow see me.

Because by the time I was a teenager, I felt I had very little to offer my friends, the Brentwood girls, who were pretty and happy and intense and free. I didn’t have new clothes or makeup, I wasn’t beautiful or interesting, and I didn’t know the boys in the bands. I was self-conscious and deferential and socially fearful in many situations. I wanted always to be smaller, because I felt that if I took up less space I could be admired and liked for being discerning, attractive, and good. I wanted to carve out a niche for myself where I could earn their favor, prove my mettle, be the best; I couldn’t be cool in any other way, but I could be the smallest, the one who needed the least, who ate the least. I tried to carve myself down so I could fit into their lives because they wouldn’t come over to mine.

But it turns out, of course, that when you don’t make space for yourself, there’s no room for anyone else either. To this day the biggest barrier in my friendships is my instinctual self-control. I pull myself in so tight I get panic attacks after parties. But I’m not 17 anymore; these days I do ask friends over, and they come, and I practice taking up space and being at home in myself, and at home in my home, with them.

I’m asking and learning this: what does it feel like to be at home in your body, every square inch of it, around other women who may or may not affirm you?

What does it feel like to make home and body spacious, overflowing, with safety and food and wine and laughter? Can I take that in? Can I allow it?

I was never, not even once, the cool kid.

My house was never the place to be.

But it turns out that if you can make space for yourself, there’s room for everyone else, if they decide to take you up on the invitation.