Work and finding a peer collective outside of what was available at my high school. I had some friends I went to school with, but I took a kitchen job at 16 and was exposed to a much larger group of ages, personalities, and beliefs. Same thing happened when I started going to punk shows regularly and found a coffee shop with a vibe I liked. Being exposed to so many different people helped me realize that what made me feel “awkward” wasn’t totally innate. I will always be a touch reserved, self-conscious, weird, but being in a jock-centric preppie high school, my ultra-conservative evangelical parents, church groups- those spaces amplified my insecurity and feelings of not belonging until it because a self-destructive feedback loop.

It’s not all rainbows and butterflies though. Alcohol came into the picture and while a good social lubricant it’s been a roller coaster. High school can keep you safe by limiting your friend options to people roughly your same age, in the real world you might end up becoming friends with people years older than you. There’s nothing wrong with making older “friends”, but as an inexperienced youth it can be hard to tell which older people recognize youth and a potential lack of boundaries so they step up and guide you positively, and which are people who struggle to recognize that, are reliving their own youth, or are straight up predators. It’s also really on you to figure out what you think is proper. When I was 16 the dude that had the party house was 30, and bought our beer for us. But he also would cut people off, make sure we didn’t over indulge, kicked out those who crossed the line, and kept people safe. I’m sure a lot of people would find a 30yo running a party house for high schoolers questionable, and rightfully so, but at the same time it was a far safer and more accepting environment for a lot of us kids than our own homes.

I also got involved in non-party related causes that were things I felt passionate about, particularly environmentalism. Similar to the party scene in that I ended up around people of all ages, all experiences, but were all present because whatever we were looking to do, we all found shared value in it.

Being around people and finding places where the bits of me I felt awkward about were accepted helped me. It also helped shape me, because when I trusted those people and they confronted me about bad behavior, instead of taking it like a rejection of me as a person I could learn to recognize what was being rejected was truly an inappropriate action.