I expected a room full of clothing donations and a small kitchen for food, but the shelter was substantial. Next to a line of snow-dusted garbage bags full of clothes in an open garage, I was greeted by a serious smile and a firm handshake. The intense young woman introduced herself as Amy, the volunteer coordinator. She led me to the adjoining warehouse where homeless teens relaxed in reclining plastic chairs or huddled around large containers of noodle dishes and trays of sandwiches.
We walked past a large TV showing reruns of Seinfeld and toward a series of offices. “Many of our kids are still in school or studying for the GED,” she explained. We stood at the center of a bustling room. She gestured toward a gym connected to a small arts studio, then a laundry room and a hallway with smaller, private offices that offered counseling and law services.
“Where do most of the kids come from?” I asked.
She glanced around. “Mostly kids from this neighborhood and out east.”
As I followed her gaze, I couldn’t help but notice the way a small girl slumped in her chair near the exit. At first I thought she might be studying, but a book sat unopened in her lap. I had the sense that she was registering my gaze, but she was unwilling to indulge me. I didn’t blame her. While her shoulder-length hair was disheveled and her posture sagged, there was something about her focus—eyes steady on a point a few feet in front of her—that suggested she was coming to some realization, or one had already arrived.
The rest of the time I spent at the shelter, sorting miscellaneous donations with co-workers, I couldn’t shake that girl’s image, slumped but steady. Maybe it was my image. Perhaps both. I could see a former version of myself in this position—the pain of stillness as change stirred somewhere deep inside.

Shortly before I turned sixteen, I became a “grown woman,” according to my friend’s mother. Each month after, the pain would fold me in half, and I would throw up for hours, all the time believing this was all part of being a newly minted “grown woman.” I didn’t like it.
Meanwhile, having expanded my view of autonomy to include not only making my own money but also choosing my environment, I felt momentum with this newfound title of adulthood. Being grown may have meant physical pain but, to my teenage self, it also meant I could move out on my own and redefine my life.
At the time, my role models were scarce. A neighborhood strip club, where women danced or sat on stools in seductive positions behind windowfront glass, stood a block from our house. I’d imagine these women driving BMWs to their nicer neighborhoods and doing what the fuck they wanted. But they, unlike me, were beautiful and brave. I’d walk past familiar homeless men and unfamiliar artists who were beginning to move into the neighborhood and invest in it but seemed disconnected somehow. These new additions wore flowing outfits and had unrestrained graying hair. They carried a different kind of mystique, one that often came with an easy walk but searching eyes.
My life was less romantic. My parents’ separation, which was fed by my father’s growing dissatisfaction and my mother’s deepening depression, made my childhood home feel like post-battle ground. Barren and neglected. I’d been working since I was fourteen, and now that I knew the pelvic pain of adulthood, I decided to set out on my own temporarily, a sort of trial run. I wanted to breathe the open air that seemed to live outside. I had vague notions of what independence meant, and I tried to explain to my father that I needed a little time away and wanted to stay with my boyfriend—no big deal—but my argument wasn’t well received.
“No,” he said calmly. “Go finish the dishes.”
“It’s not about him, Dad. I’ll go somewhere else if you want, but I need time. I need a break from all this.” I gestured around the room. I’d watched him ignore my mother or call her fat and useless because she “didn’t contribute to the household.” And now that they were finally getting divorced, she was spending most nights away. It wasn’t just the pain of their fissure and the seeming loss of my mother but the sense of complicity I felt by staying with my father. Why had my mother been forced to leave? Who was he to tell her to go and me to stay?
We engaged in a lengthy yelling match that crescendoed in the kitchen with him saying a slew of things that amounted to, “You’re not going anywhere.”
“I’m going,” I said. “I’m not on your side.”
With this, it was my turn to be calm. I walked to the front door with my under-packed bags. As Dad started toward me, the skin above his beard hardened and the lines on his face stilled. My father stopped when he got to the porch. As I backed away and down the alley, telling him I just needed a few nights out of the house, some time to think, he shook his head.
“I’ll be back,” I told him, picking up my pace.
“If you leave, don’t come back,” he yelled.
With this single line, I had momentum and a narrative, but I never once thought he meant it. I’d soon find out I had been kicked out of the house, but in that moment I felt the confidence to be defiant. I looked back one last time, noticing my father’s well-worn shoes and oversized pants as he walked back inside. He slammed the wood-framed stained glass door. He’d made the door when I was a baby with leftover glass from a commission project when he too was an artist with wandering eyes. It was the most beautiful part of our home, and it too would crack.

As I walked toward the bus stop on High Street that day, where I used to imagine stealing away to new worlds that contained more magic and less grit, I tried to bury fear in adrenaline. Once on the bus, the child still alive inside me told stories of adventure as I sat with my head tilted against the tinted window, watching the bars and pawn shops whoosh by. My neighborhood faded, and the ride brought the promise of something more—namely, the far south side of Columbus, Ohio, replete with squat, quiet homes that weren’t built for anyone over 5’2”.
Buckeye Steel, once the largest single-site steel foundry in the States, end-capped my boyfriend’s neighborhood. It loomed at the last stop on Parsons Road, and I thought about staying on the bus until it turned around, but J was waiting for me with a few haphazard wildflowers. His smile disarmed, and when we arrived at his house—a boxy single-story home that I’d been to before—I knew I wouldn’t stay long.
I settled in with a Special Brew, trying to ignore the curious way his father looked at me. But I couldn’t sleep that night. We cuddled, but when I went to the bathroom, I had to pass an open-doored room. His father’s television was on mute, and when I tiptoed by, he waved enthusiastically from his bed, wearing only underwear.
The next morning, after finding nothing but beer and carry-out chicken nuggets in the fridge, I told J’s father that I appreciated his generosity. I had to get to school. I jotted a note to J with hearts and promises, telling him to call me when he woke up.
“Bring some more of that Special Brew when you come back. You drank it all,” J’s father said. His voice had the rasp of a long-time smoker.
I thought about reminding him that I was barely sixteen but instead said, “Sure. Can I have one of those?” I pointed to his cigarettes.
He handed me two. A generous host.
I went to school and arrived back each day, always expecting to run into my father. I figured he’d call and search for me at the very least, but nothing happened. I’d called Mom to let her know I was okay, and she said she wished we’d reconcile. She wasn’t in a position to take care of me then. She too was sleeping on couches, and she’d soon get an apartment.
It was almost Thanksgiving when I decided to return home. I rode the COTA down High Street, past a familiar restaurant. Dad’s stained-glass panels of orchids were in the second-floor windows, and I felt a moment of tenderness when I saw them. He’s not angry at me. He doesn’t mean what he says to Mom. He just wants to be an artist. I’d often watched Dad work on his designs, and something in him would light up.
When the bus stopped, I rushed off with my worn bags. I repeated in my mind what I might say. It didn’t include an apology but, rather, a plea. “I’m a kid, Dad. Let’s work this out.” While I felt grown, the idea of being a kid seemed my only card.
I could hear our golden retriever mix, Honey, barking and scratching at the back door as I approached. But there was no other movement. There was no Oldsmobile out front. And when I arrived at the front of the house, I noticed the blinds were closed. My entire body pulsed. I looked down at my cuffed jeans, which were dirty where they’d skimmed the sidewalk, then took a deep breath and tried out my key. I jiggled it and tried again.
When I finally accepted the fact that the locks had been changed, my body grew rigid. He’d meant what he said. I left, and now I couldn’t come back.
After pacing the length of the front porch a few times, I became more determined to pet Honey and raid the fridge before making my next move. I didn’t have to come home, but I deserved to change my clothes. Dad had thought of changing the locks, but did he remember that he’d also shown us kids how to break in? I released the lock on a ground-level window with a piece of thin sheet metal that was stashed around the back of the house and looked around before removing the glass and edging myself in. I fell hard on the basement floor and replaced the window, locking it back into place with the tiny sliding locks.
When I rushed upstairs, Honey tackled me. I kneeled to hug her, and she began wiggling around—too excited to stay still. I was still welcome to her.
I made a beeline to the fridge and gave Honey a piece of American cheese from the fridge before eating an entire package of turkey. The house was immaculate, and there was no trace of Mom. No trace of me. I was used to at least a little mess, a light coating of Honey’s hair on the living room carpet. The sterility reminded me to hustle, so I ran upstairs, grabbed some clean clothes, and wrote a note.
In case you’re wondering, I’m OK. Happy Thanksgiving. Your Daughter
After snatching whatever snacks I could find and throwing Honey another slice of Cheese, explaining that I’d be back to see her soon, I rushed out the front door for what I thought might be the last time. If I’d known about a center for homeless teens at the time, I might’ve gone there. I thought about calling Mom, but I didn’t know where she was; instead, I called my friend Lee.
Hauling my two backpacks full of clothes and basics, waiting for magic that didn’t arrive, I rode the bus a lot for the next few months. I stayed with J once or twice a week, then not at all. Meanwhile, I had just enough discipline to show up to school and my part-time shifts at the grocery store. I made sure to contribute financially to anyone who extended their home. But I still felt restless.
If only I could find the right place to land, I believed I could outrun my family patterns. What I didn’t realize at the time was that my decisions in 1996 were going to define my life for almost a decade. Unlike the future technocrats of the world, who were dropping out of Ivy League colleges and focusing like monks on their paths from garages or basements, I would soon drop out of an inner-city high school, and my parents, who didn’t have excess income anyway, were no longer a crutch.
In the cafeteria, I looked forward to my daily fistful of chocolaty Star Crunch snacks to eat in transit because I couldn’t stomach the rubbery burgers or mashed potatoes served on trays. I’d sit at a different table for lunch each day, usually with Lee or my new friend, Maria, but the two ran in different circles, and even in the forty-five minutes we got for lunch, I always felt the need to move. I tried to make the high school experience more bearable by bringing my new favorite pastime and companion, vodka, with me to class disguised in a Mr. Juicy. The potent orange concoction was the only thing that slowed my mind and, again, I wasn’t the only one.
My friends and I would meet in the bathroom. Holding our breath as we poured a little something and toasted our juice drinks, we’d celebrate a tall girl on the drill team whose mother was a flight attendant and was the source of the tiny bottles that saved us from boredom for a mere dollar or two each day. This girl’s locker was near mine, so I often had first pick, but on busy days, she’d dole them out in the bathroom in the last five minutes of class, before the bell.
As much as it helped, no amount of sugar and liquor made me feel entirely comfortable in class. Or anywhere. I was beginning to realize that the deafening silence that lived in my childhood home also lived in the outside world. Maybe if the biggest problems had been the flickering lights overhead and the monotone voice of the math teacher, or mere adolescent rebellion, I would’ve been fine. But my problems didn’t fit neatly in one section of Maslow’s pyramid.
I wore the same jeans with a rotating set of tee shirts, and while my first attempt to change the scenery at home had been to walk (run) away, my first attempt to change the scenery at school was the drill team. I’d seen other kids make the most of high school by joining the band or a sports team, and while I had no interest in either, I was flexible. My vodka dealer was one of the team leaders, and she assured me that although I’d have to audition, the stakes were low. Our football team had a 24-game losing streak that spanned seasons.
The best part of being on the drill team was learning the chant at the end of our dance routine, which the team had to memorize by audition. P-A-N-to the T. H-E-R to the S. P-A-N to the T-H-E to the R-S-P to the A-N-T to the H-E-R to the S! It was my first mantra, and I adored it. A small part of me wanted to share it with my parents, but I thought better of putting the kid cap on again. While I had the chant down pat, our actual drills were tougher. I eked by because I was able to do the splits, and only one of the other girls could, but it wouldn’t be long before I grew frustrated with practice and the way our football team was made fun of by other schools. After a season, I folded up my maroon and white skirt, which a teammate’s mother had sewn haphazardly but with love, and shoved it deep into my locker, where it would remain.
I decided to try the school’s career track next. It was a program that invited students to commit to a trade. Nothing in the brochure sparked my interest, but I ultimately settled on Banking and Accounting, which came with a paid internship and would land me, the brochures implied, in a well-paying job after graduation. The money was better than the grocery store, and the idea of working for a bank reminded me of movies like Big Business and Working Girl, where women made serious money as they flaunted their big hair and even bigger personalities. I tried to picture myself as one of these quick-witted female professionals in shoulder pads and vamp lipstick, who could be in business and leadership roles and get recognized for their contributions to the world, the kind of role models I didn’t often see in real life.
I started at a banking operations center, where I entered data and spent a few days a week studying how to keep a balance sheet. The career center offered accessible homework, and it was organized. I earned an easy A, even though I was busy getting tipsy at work and flat-out drunk in my friend’s basement on my days off. Listening to whatever mixed tape I had, I’d type numbers into a 10-key pad as fast as I could, relying on my work ethic to carry me through the boredom. But after my thirty-day review, it was clear that I was not a top performer. My speed was high, but my error rate was higher.
“What truly legit job cares if you have a high school diploma from a shitty inner-city school?” I asked Lee, whose basement couch was the most available at the time.
“Can’t think of any,” she said, creating tiny white dots on her pink toenails. She’d been a private school student until her final year of high school, when she transferred, which made her especially jaded. A year was 365 days, 8,760 hours to fill, and I didn’t want to spend even 1,000 of those hours at my high school. Why not avoid the tough-cushioned bus and just work? “I mean, I’m going to finish,” she added.
Lee’s mother pulled me aside shortly after I suggested I might drop out of school. She explained that she was only letting me stay with them because my mother had asked her to, and I realized I wasn’t as sovereign as I thought. Mom was doing a bit of couch-surfing on her own, staying with a friend as the divorce finalized, but she was still looking out for me.
Lee’s mother dialed a number, my mother’s temporary home, and handed me the phone. And weeks later, when Mom got a closet-sized apartment, we finally met in person for the first time in almost a year. When I saw her, I became a kid again.
“Can I come back?” I asked.
“I’ve been waiting to have a place,” she said.
I lived with Mom for a few months and found a new job as a busser at a diner, but I no longer went to class. Each time I tried, I found myself nervously waiting for the bell and unable to concentrate. Something in me always wanted to move.
The next and last time I sat in a public school system chair—one which had a shorter front right leg due to a missing glide—I rocked forward and felt my entire body on edge. I used a soft No. 2 pencil to fill in tiny circles at the Adult Education Center. The answers felt a little too easy for my comfort. But I must’ve paid better attention in class than I realized because I passed. And shortly after earning my general education diploma (GED), I picked up the phone to call my father.
Two decades after reconciling with my father, I still didn’t understand why a single stand had cost me so much, but I didn’t need to understand. After completing my shift sorting donations, I gathered my bag and thanked Amy, but something felt incomplete. The women who had arrived after me, co-workers at the university, thanked me for setting up the event.
“It feels good to give,” one of them said.
I agreed. This shelter was walking distance to where I grew up, and I wondered how much I would’ve benefitted from their services. Instead, I told her I’d head out the front. As I walked out, I noticed an empty chair by the other exit and looked around for the hunched girl. I thought about her willfully averted gaze and wondered what was contained in her eyes—whether it was focus, realization, or yet another desire to run. I could still relate to all three, and perhaps I always will.
On the drive home, I thought about how alone it felt when I was that girl’s age, how impossible it was to truly be grown when you’re not yet ready. I could still feel this former me—her desire to escape what she thought was destined. There must’ve been a moment when she sat still enough that everything shifted and she gained perspective, an instant of knowing or awakening or acceptance. Perhaps a series of instances. Whatever the case, I still understand that girl. I see her now and then. I wish her well.