When I was 16 I never wanted to be home because I was always in trouble, or if i wasn’t, I was paranoid because I was often doing something that my parents would not approve of.
I had a car, though.
So I would drive to the bookstore.
I would likely run into someone I knew, but the people who I didn’t want to see didn’t frequent the bookstore, so that was alright.
I would make the aisles a maze, getting lost in the shelves, wondering whose world I would become a part of that afternoon.
Usually I would sit on the ground in the young adult or teen section for a few hours. I preferred it to the chairs because it felt like hiding. I would completely be immersed in some other 16 year old girl’s story, and boyfriends, and friend problems, and family, and wishes.
My own would be picked back up when I left the store and got into my car. I would probably pass some other teenagers on the road who knew me, or had heard rumors about me. Who knew what they thought they knew?
I also liked the music autobiographies because they usually had some good crunchy stories in there.
Once that summer, a girlfriend of mine and I got incredibly stoned, wore each other’s sunglasses, and laughed for a good 30 minutes at the Kama Sutra in the Sexual Wellness section. We were obviously not very mature, and probably not ready to be sexually active (although we both were). But it was fun, and we giggled a lot.
There was a little coffee shop in that bookstore. I would buy a too-rich brownie if I wasn’t starving myself that day.
Once, when I was reading a book on the ground, a gangly-handsome barista brought me a cappuccino in a little cup. He told me that he noticed me coming in from time to time, and wanted to be nice and give me a cappuccino. I was very grateful for the drink and flattered at the kind gesture.
We had a little conversation, and he asked me:
“What about you? Are you in college in Jackson?”
Slightly embarrassed at being so young, I said, “No, I’m actually in high school at Madison.”
“Oh.” He was surprised. “A senior?”
Smiling, I answered,”No, I’m a sophomore!”
Goodbye forever, cappuccino boy.
I liked that my age scared him, and that he thought I was older and pretty. My face held the power to terrify college men! I delighted in this new discovery.
Another place I would often escape to was Liberty Park. Friends and others would often congregate there to smoke marijuana or chug Four-Lokos that we purchased at a gas station or have unprotected sex in the backseat of someone’s Honda Civic after it got dark and there was no other place for a sixteen-year old who wanted to disobey their parents to go.
One time, the summer before my senior year, four friends and I were unabashedly smoking out of a bong in the gazebo of the park, when our school counselor came running up to us, on her daily jog! My friend Martin quickly hid the bong under a bench and we made small talk with our sweet, friendly guidance counselor, eyes red and minds paranoid. When she ran away, we started laughing nervously and hysterically. Did she see what we were doing? I still don’t know.
That park is full of crazy memories. But I would sometimes just go by myself, when I did not have to be at my after school job, or at choir practice, or in class. I would park my little car and walk into the park, straight to the giant wind chimes. I would pull on the rope and run back and forth through the wind chimes, which hung about twelve feet high. Then, I would go make nonsensical music on the xylophones that I guess nobody else ever paid attention to because I never saw anyone but myself and two friends play them.
After moving to New York, I found out how easy it is to be alone and busy, all at once. You can be in a massive place full of people and nobody sees you. Your neighbors can know when you wake up in the morning, when you have sex, when you come home drunk, when you go on vacation, but never even learn your name. I did not feel the need to hide in order to deal with my problems. I would just burst into tears on the 6 train, because nobody knew me there, anyways.
When my heart was being crushed by someone who I loved with my whole being, I escaped to St. Catherine’s Park while he was taking a nap, and swung on the swings, pumping my legs as hard as I could. I wanted to let go of the swings and fly directly to Heaven, so that I did not have to be on this broken planet anymore.
When he finally broke my heart, I stayed awake until three in the morning, stood half naked on my fire escape in the summer rain, and sobbed.
I do not really try to escape anymore.
I think it is better to deal with the troubles as they come, when they come, wherever you are.
If you hide from your reputation in a bookstore, when you leave to go back home, your reputation is still awful. If you hide from your guilt, it still exists and floats above your head like an ugly cloud. If you hide from your mean boyfriend, he will probably still treat you like a bag of garbage.
But hiding does not help you to move forward. If you just let things go, they will drop and break all over your floor. But there is beauty in acknowledging things, putting them in their proper places, and then letting them go and moving on.
And once you let them go properly, the weight on your shoulders is less, and you can fly higher!
