would occasionally come over to mine. We did basic things together—played checkers, played video games, and ate dinner with either her parents or mine.
I don’t recall there being anything profound about our friendship, nor did we ever become particularly close. But it’s funny the way people sometimes enter our lives just to teach us things about ourselves. It’s funny the way a moment can shift you. One day I went over to Jessica’s house just as she and her mom were getting home from the grocery store. I went to the trunk of the car to help carry some of the groceries, but Jessica smiled and refused to allow me to help. Instead, she grabbed every plastic bag, her arms overloaded, and all I could think was, “That’s hot.” I don’t know why, or where the thought came from. But it turned me on somewhere in my body, the fact that she took it upon herself to spare me from this one silly chore. Days later, I woke up from a dream where Jessica was on top of me, making out with me. And all I thought was, “That’s interesting.”
Here’s something I’ve come to accept: we can’t deny the ways in which we are shaped by our upbringings—regardless of the intentions of our caretakers. Our parents play an undeniably significant role in influencing our personalities, our temperaments, and the ways we come to view the world, especially when we are young. Also, we are shaped by more than our experiences—we’re shaped by the meaning we assign to those experiences. That said, my parents are two of the most loving people on this earth and I’m grateful beyond words for them both. But I’d be leaving out an important part of my story if I didn’t include their effect on me as a teenager.
My mom was the primary caretaker for my sister and I throughout our developing years, while my dad worked very long hours as a salesman. She carried much of the burden of caring for two twin girls, often on her own, and dedicated much of her life to our wellbeing. Perhaps because of this, she was very overprotective of my sister and I growing up—nothing I did made it past her, and in her mind, imminent danger was always just ahead. As kids, my sister and I weren’t allowed to go over to our friends’ houses for sleepovers unless my mom met and approved of each friend’s parents—while this may have been appropriate for a period of time, it went on until we were well into our teens. She warned us time and again not to go to public bathrooms alone, not to talk to strangers, and to stay away from large, windowless vans. She opted to be a chaperone on most school trips; otherwise, we just wouldn’t go. There were times my sister and I even caught my mom listening in on phone calls with our friends.
While I understand now that my mom’s overly suspicious nature was rooted in her intention to keep me healthy and safe, as a young teenager with very little life experience, I had not yet reached the vantage point from which I could appreciate my mom’s intense involvement in my life for what it was. I knew only that I was anxious, confused, and curious about so many things still beyond my conception. I came to believe that freedom was dangerous. Freedom came with a price tag, and so it was difficult for me to develop an early sense of who I was. Nonetheless, the last thing I wanted to do was disappoint my mom, and so I made it my responsibility to earn her approval at any cost, even when it meant sacrificing my own need for more independence.
As for my dad, his larger-than-life personality has always been endearing, but it felt a bit intrusive to me as a sensitive adolescent as I struggled to connect with the quiet depths that would later define me. My dad has the kind of carelessly extroverted presence that spills all over the place, fills up rooms, and dominates the spaces he enters. As a child, my dad was my hero—the guy who took me to experience new things and made everything more fun and exciting. He made snowmen with me in the snow, played volleyball with me in the pool, and gave me piggyback rides on the living room carpet. But when the disease of becoming a woman set in, I had the sense that my dad didn’t know how to involve himself in my life in ways that would support my evolving emotional needs at the time.
Branching Out as an Individual
Although my sister and I had been around one another constantly for all our childhood years, by the time we reached high school, we each began to branch out more as individuals. No longer did we share the exact same friends, musical tastes, or clothing styles (pretty much the only things that matter when you’re a teenager). But this is not to say we “grew apart,” necessarily. Instead, the distance felt more like an unspoken agreement between our souls. The need to grow as separate beings and the desire to explore our budding selves had become too intense at this point to ignore. And although we were not yet mature enough to confide everything in one another throughout the rocky phases of self-discovery, in time, our separate journeys actually brought us closer.
When it came to socializing, Kristy and I were a little bit different. Kristy attempted to break away from a contained upbringing by having adventures with new people who enabled her to feel a new sense of freedom and possibility. I, on the other hand, went out and socialized in more conservative ways, cautiously collecting new experiences and reflecting on them. Kristy had different ways of dealing with her growing pains, too. She, a degree more rebellious than I, would wage wars with my parents, especially my mom, in the name of her independence. I remember angst-filled yelling matches during which my sister would argue for her God-given right to stay out past ten o’ clock, while my mother retorted back at her that she could live on her own if she wanted to make her own rules. I was different in that I avoided confrontation at all costs. Instead, I internalized a lot of my feelings and let fear control most of my decisions until eventually I did what all teenagers do. I started telling white lies to protect my parents from who I needed to become.
Another layer of oppression many people experience as adolescents has to do with society. My sister, who is a psychotherapist now, agrees that while adolescents are typically stereotyped as bratty or narcissistic in their quest to discover who they are, the need to formulate an identity at this age is so critical. And yet, it’s precisely at this age that we are first plagued with many responsibilities of adulthood. It’s no wonder so many teenagers are moved to rebel and express themselves through radical means; they’re not given the room to explore themselves as they go through one of the biggest transitions of their lives. Instead, society places all this weight on their shoulders.
Another important element to take into consideration here is that not every teenager’s temperament is the same. My sister and I have always been exceptionally deep, observant, highly sensitive people. So our need to reflect and take our time with developing was perhaps even greater than for the average person. Not having this time caused me a great deal of overwhelm and anxiety.
I didn’t date anyone until the eleventh grade. My first boyfriend, Joe, had sweaty hands and a frog-like face. He wore emo glasses, played guitar, and listened to Green Day. As horrible as it is to say, my agreeing to date Joe was more of an “all right, let’s get this boyfriend thing over with” thing than anything based on any sort of attraction. I remember my first kiss. Joe and I were at the movies, and we’d planned to plant our mouths on one another’s for the first time as soon as the lights went dark in the theater. He’d just finished eating a Butterfinger, and I could smell the candy on his breath before I tasted it. It was an unremarkable kiss, devoid of sparks, triggering zero emotions (at least on my end). But the possibility that I might be a lesbian still had yet to cross my mind. I had so little experience socially and romantically that I chalked up the lack of fireworks to the fact that I was a novice, that I hadn’t yet discovered “my type,” or that I wasn’t popular enough to attract someone I could actually be attracted to.
Shortly after Joe came Mike and Jon and Chris and Matt. To me, they were all the same. I went through the motions of what I thought it meant to flirt, though I was only mimicking what I saw other girls doing and it came with extreme
