Illustration by Alanna Stapleton.

V.
The first time I went to Scoville Park, I was high. I’d smoked pot at a friend’s apartment across the street. I had to. It was the only way to tamp down the anxiety, to seem as cool as everyone else. I was fifteen, a sophomore, and I’d been watching the kids who went to this park for a year. They were the ones who smoked cigarettes on the corner. Who dyed their hair. Who skateboarded. Who wore the same band t-shirts and sneakers and thrift-store style as me. After school they walked a couple of blocks west to the park and they sat there and smoked cigarettes (and secretly weed) or skated or played frisbee and hackeysack (though I wasn’t interested in that particular crowd). I felt like I’d never wanted anything more than to hang out at that park with those kids in the cigarette smoking circle on the side of the hill. That would be my book/TV show/movie and it would be better than anything I’d read or seen.

It should have been simple. They were congregating right out there in the open after all. But even now, I know that walking in there without anyone who was connected to that group would be scary to me. So I hadn’t gone until I met a girl who’d just moved to town and knew some other people who hung out there. We got high and walked in. One super friendly guy introduced me to that circle I’d wanted so badly to sit in. I was there. I was sitting in the circle, but almost everyone in it was standoffish. They had known each other forever–or a year or so at least. They had inside jokes. And–I realize this now, though I didn’t back then–they probably all had the similar reasons to be as guarded as I was. Most of them were probably sitting there, laughing at each other’s jokes with the fingers of their free, non-cigarette hand knit into the grass–outsiders clinging desperately to this inside they’d managed to be a part of.

I would keep going back. Almost always high so I could be brave. Trying to plant roots in the dry dirt. Feeling like one gust of wind would blow me away. From the outside, it probably looked I belonged there. On the inside, it rarely felt that way even though I would never stop wishing that it would.

Illustration by Alanna Stapleton.

VI.
One night in high school my friends and I dressed up in formal wear and brought a boombox to the park and danced until the police came and kicked us out. Then we went to the dinner we were currently frequenting and ordered lots of food, like actual dinners instead of just coffee and fries and pie. It was supposed to be our version of prom or homecoming–I can’t remember which. I also can’t remember if this was junior or senior year. I can’t remember what I was wearing or what music we were dancing to though I assume it was probably ska and some upbeat punk and probably some 80s stuff.

This should have been one of my movie moments. This was my alternative version of the big dance. I should have cherished it, but instead my memory is so vague that I question if I was there. I remember an overpriced fruit plate at the dinner but that’s all. Did I go to the dance part or was I convinced by my best friend to come out at the last minute and join everyone after refusing to go to the dance part because I felt left out for some reason? I do remember mixed feelings over that fruit plate. I remember loving the friends at that table with me but doubting that our group would stick together much longer because that kept happening. People would get into new relationships and social dynamics would shift and I would be left longing for what was or what I thought should have been.

Being left out was a foregone conclusion. I told myself I always had been and I always would be. I spent so much time bracing for it, that I lost out on the moments when I was right there in the center of it all.

Illustration by Alanna Stapleton.

VII.
I remember sitting on the curb outside of a party hosted by people from that circle at the park that I’d wanted so badly to be a part of. I was convinced that I wasn’t invited even though my friends kept telling me I was. Those people don’t like me, I told them. They never have and they hated two of my ex-boyfriends and still consider me guilty by association. One by one, the friends who were trying to convince me otherwise trickled into the party. I told the last one to go, just to leave me there on the curb, and reluctantly with the tip of an imaginary hat, he did so.

I could have gone inside with him. I could have gone inside with my whole group of friends. Instead I sat on a curb alone, shedding angry tears. Instead, I left to get high to silence the voice in my head.

The one that called me Poseur. Imposter. Those were the words, the feelings that chipped away at my good moments and heightened the bad ones instead. I may have armored myself based on real judgement from others when I was young, but as I got older, it was perceived judgement from others that really held me back or my own insecurities.

I still struggle with this. A few years ago, I went to a writing retreat. I was friends with most of the other writers, but most of them were also more successful than me. My days there were clouded by writer’s block, lack of sleep, self-doubt. “I don’t belong here,” I kept telling myself.

Illustration by Alanna Stapleton.

VIII.
I watched my friends and other people I admired shape shift. Love heavy metal and musicals. Wear combat boots and cheerlead at football games. But I always felt the need to defend how I could love different things or I would force myself to choose. One teasing comment from a friend when I showed up to a punk show in black lipstick and a Cure shirt left me thinking I had to decide between being punk and being goth. I couldn’t just be Stephanie.

The truth is I’ve long been so obsessed with how others view me that sometimes I don’t know how I view myself.

During my sophomore year of high school, I started taking beginner-level adult ballet classes at a local dance academy. There were no other teenagers in my class because, I presume, any teenagers who were dancing ballet at that point were actually good at it. Sometimes I saw a friend who was in our high school dance troupe in the halls, but that was it. Anyone else I knew who was doing extracurriculars did them through school.

It was such a relief to put on my black leotard and twist my hair up into a bun. As soon as I put my hand on the barre, I switched off the part of my brain that thought about all of the places I did not fit. I focused on moving my limbs. The body that I usually felt so uncomfortable in–that I hunched over to hide–it uncurled and moved and flowed like any other body. I didn’t push it hard because there was no goal of advancement; I was doing exactly what I was there to do. There was no one to compare myself to because everyone else looked my mom’s age or older. They smiled at me, probably thinking I was a good kid because I was taking a class at night and not out in the streets. I didn’t actually care what they thought. though. In that room, I wasn’t good or bad, though.

I just was.

I have thought about that class and how freeing it felt for years. Slowly, I have started to realize that is what I really need: not a space where I fit, a feeling of “out” or “in.” I need to find the spaces, internally and externally, where I can just be. ♦

Alanna Stapleton is an illustrator and embroidery artist currently based in Minneapolis. She enjoys eating breakfast food, quoting Parks and Rec, and thinking about horses. You can view more of her work on Instagram and on her website.