One of those “weird cool girls”

When I was an actress, my favorite part of the show was when everyone went home. The soft house lights were on, and I walked through the empty crowd kicking my heels through balloons. Strips of sequins and tassels littered the floor. Piles of dirt, torn tickets, popcorn crumbs—this was the only evidence that anyone had been there to watch the show. Sometimes, I still put those costumes back on, turn up the music, and dance on top of the kitchen table. I close my eyes and imagine the warm glow of the old spotlight warming my skin on stage.

That was six months before the summer that changed my life, when my boyfriend and I made our first real choice as adults. We’d been castmates since first grade, growing up under the same spotlight, but never quite seeing each other in this light until after the final curtain call of our senior year. It felt like running away—even though we were eighteen and perfectly capable of making our own decisions. There was something deliciously rebellious about running away, like we were characters in our own coming-of-age story. We were just writing the first pages of our adult lives.

I was sitting on top of a red pickup in the parking lot of an off-brand grocery store in a town with less than one hundred people. My boyfriend was inside buying snacks for the road ahead, plotting our course to the next river town. While he took groups on whitewater adventures all day, I had the privilege of exploring the surrounding forests and towns, discovering what true independence tasted like. 

The oversized t-shirt I bought at a reggae concert that spring looked like a dress paired with my athletic shorts. I kicked off my flip-flops and flicked down my sunglasses. My dark hair was damp and curly from swimming all day with a braid. I had just torn open a hot sauce packet and was spreading it across my bean and cheese burrito when an old man in a motorized wheelchair spotted me from across the parking lot. I pretended not to notice, but it would have been rude not to acknowledge him when he wheeled right up to the tailgate. He looked up at me, confused. I looked down at him, likewise.

“You must be one of those weird cool girls,” he said. Taken aback, I didn’t say anything, and he rode away. Years later, I still think about that moment—who was he to see right through my carefully constructed persona?

Was I one of those weird cool girls? Maybe, if weird cool girls wore makeup and dresses to play every character except herself. If weird cool girls climbed trees and talked to animals. If they preferred feminist, anti-capitalist dystopian novels to princesses and fairy tales. If they loved singing and dancing but nothing more than writing. If their dreams were astronomically larger than any stuffy small town could accommodate.

Maybe I had been playing the part of one of those “weird cool girls” at that moment. Because everyone knows a real “cool girl” doesn’t have any interests; she likes what you like. A real “cool girl” doesn’t have any needs; she just wants you to be happy. A real “cool girl” never loses her cool. She doesn’t get angry or sad or have any emotion that would make you uncomfortable. I worked tirelessly to fit the expectations of others. Because if I didn’t fit their expectations, they would leave me… right?

That’s the thing about being a people pleaser: you get so good at pleasing others, you forget what pleases you.

But that summer, I started to remember. I found hidden swimming holes where I stripped down to nothing but sunshine, the water cool against my bare skin. I wandered into dusty bookstores and vintage record shops. I stumbled upon a Shakespeare Festival, watching thespians wander the streets in costumes as if they were casual clothes. While my boyfriend guided strangers through whitewater, I guided myself through the back roads and alleyways of towns whose names I’ve since forgotten but memories I cherish.

At night, we reconnected by the fire, sharing stories of our separate adventures until the stars wheeled overhead. He shared tales of rapids and waterfalls while I recounted discoveries of hidden nooks in the city. We weren’t playing leads in a school production anymore—we were writing our own impromptu scripts. 

That summer granted me the freedom to be whoever I wanted to be for the first time in my life. And I had no idea who that was. My self-assurance was so unstable that a simple comment by a stranger in a parking lot knocked me down. I am still learning that growing up doesn’t mean having all the answers—it means becoming comfortable with the questions. The moment you think you know is always when something changes. 

You never know what moments will change your life until they’ve passed. All my life, I’d been trying to break free from the roles assigned to me, but I didn’t realize they were all part of me, too. It would be arrogant and naive to say my journey toward self-discovery ended that summer—it barely began. But it was the first time I realized that the most important– and often most difficult– performance of my life is being authentically myself, no matter who is and isn’t watching. 

From The Wild Unknown Tarot