Last year, I had likely the most amazing experience of my life at a teen Rite of Passage retreat, Adventure Game Theatre. I felt like I could finally be myself and be happy in this amazing community, the best I've ever found. When the first day arrived this year, I was only a little bit nervous. Mostly excited. I'd been waiting for this for a whole year. The only place I could be myself, I felt like, and the place with the greatest community one could find. We ran around barefoot and put on costumes and sang around the fire and cuddled and meditated and played and swore too much and gave lots of great hugs. It wasn't really a normal summer camp, from what I'd heard about most. I wrote in my journal every day to keep the memories alive. Even as for the people I have just met, everyone there felt like family to me after a few days. At first, it was nothing like last year, not meeting my expectations. I wasn't hanging out with the same people who I had really missed for a year, and there were a hole bunch of annoying newbies. I gave myself a good talking too when I was sitting around alone in the forest one day. I told myself to follow my heart, my intuition, and do what I wanted to. I didn't want to be held back from joy by my own expectations and all of the "supposed-to's." That was when it started to get good. If I described every moment in detail, or even vaguely, not only would I go on for pages and pages (I wrote upwards of a hundred in my journal) but words cannot even describe the experience. By the seventh night, we were all like close family, only having known each other for barely a week. I felt like I had forged exponetially deeper connections with each and every person there than anyone that I'd been in school with for over eight years. That night, we did a healing activity, you could call it. But it was so much more.
First, we split into Gender Circles. The Moon Circle for female-identifying people, the Sun Circle for male-idenifying people, and the Stars Circle for truly anyone in between. I attended the Moon Circle, and we talked about what it meant to be a woman, relationships, and answered anonymous questions on slips of paper. We could hear screams from the Sun Circle and joked about them being battle cries. When the circles united, many of the men were crying. We would soon learn that they have discussed what it meant to be a man, and how they often felt like they must supress their emotions. They then expressed the thick and thin, tears and screams and all. It was like their vulnerability was contagious. Questions spun around the large circle, between genders. My two best friends next to me had begun to sniffle, one at a time. First, the younger one. She was underage for this retreat, two years younger than me. I didn't know what she was crying about, but I didn't need to. I was strong. I put my arm around her, a little nervous that she would resent. But she leaned into my and cried still, because I knew she needed it. The older one, who I loved, too seemed troubled. I put my arm around her, too, and embraced her. Eventually, both of them lifted up their heads to the whole circle, their tears calming. But I kept holding them. I didn't see a reason to let go, and I never wanted to. We sang around the fire briefly, before a spontaneous idea arose. A handful of people would sit around the circle; they were the ones who needed healing. The others would stand around, singing to them. Telling them they were beautiful, they were okay, they would be okay. No one raised their hands for either role, it wasn't like that. You stepped in if you felt like you needed the healing. I was strong. I was so priveleged, and I was ashamed of it. I had a nice life. No one really hated me. I was really smart in school, really healthy, I had a stable home and my family loved me, and I had a wavering handful of friends. It wasn't perfect, but it was fine. Compared to the others' dead sisters and suicidal parents and broken families and injurious self-harm, I was really lucky. I stepped in anyway. Maybe my problem wasn't external like many of theirs, but it didn't really matter. I stepped in, and I leaned into a random person: I didn't have to know who it was, because I trusted and loved and felt everlastingly supported by everyone here with everything I had in me. And I cried. I am a crier. Always have been. I cry over lost pencils and silly family feuds. But I hadn't cried like this in a while, cried for a real reason, for real grief and sorrow. I cried for my knack of body shaming myself, for endless stress over grades. I cried for every day I cried on the bus, missing this community. I cried for my best friend, who I loved, the one who started out in the outer circle, but then moved to the inner, because she needed to cry, too. I cried because she had showed me the scars and I didn't know why, but I knew she wasn't okay. None of us were completely okay, but we were a little bit more okay. We had each other, and that was really all that matters.
I embraced and leaned into and clutched the hands of who-knows-who. When she moved away, to the one who had felt like a brother to me last year but now turned out to have a crush on her so now ignored me, I followed, because whether he ignored me or not, he would always feel like a brother to me. I leaned on her and wrapped my arms around his shoulders and he rubbed my arm and we all cried, all three of us, all of us. He didn't hate me, none of them did. They loved me, they all did. And I loved them, too. Before I went over to him, he nodded at me. Our eyes met, I made sure they did. I wasn't going to let this pass again. And he nodded at me, slowly, like he was telling me he was here for me. And everything would be okay. And I was like a sister to him, too, even though I was a pain in the ass. That was kind of the point, I figured. The point was, really, though, that he was here for me. That was what his nod meant. And so I went over to him, and he embraced me. This couldn't go on forever. It was over soon enough, and we sang more. We were healed, and we were one as a family. I gave everyone big hugs, everyone. I held on to my two best friends a little bit longer, and my brother, too. I never wanted to let go. That night, the younger one wrote a note to me. Saying how much she valued my support, and how I gave her a space that she could really express her vulnerabilities. She said that all not quite as fancy, though, with fancy words. She said it in eleven-year-old words, with messy handwriting, like me. She didn't dot her i's, either, and that made me really happy. The other one, the older one, didn't write any notes, but that was okay. She wasn't like that. The younger one was like me: yearning to be vulnerable, to adventure, to explore. The older one was energetic but kept all of her problems locked away, inside. And I knew she needed me, or at least she needed someone to know the stories of her scars. I let her know every day that I could be that person, and she said she really appreciated that, but I had trouble believing her. Now, I did. She told me the stories, but that didn't even matter as much as the stories of the whole community, of our tears.
I couldn't fall asleep that night. After we were sung to sleep, I creeper outside and took a seat on the steps. She could always spot the Big Dipper seamlessly, but I couldn't quite figure it out tonight. She wasn't here, either. Instead, I sat beside the fluffy black cat with the gleaming green, beautiful eyes and I watched the faint yellow lantern illuminate the plants that lined the sunbaked paths between the homey buildings. It all felt like a little village. It felt like home. I had been completely alone, last year. It wouldn't be that way this year, I told myself. I would reach out, arrange meetups, call up my self-nominated brother and my friends and I wouldn't be alone. I had a choice, I realized, how to handle my sorrow. This year, I would choose to be myself, even at school. I would choose to call everyone up, and I would choose to smile. This year would be okay, because, as clichéd as it sounds, I would choose love. What I thought about, sitting alone on the steps, was everything that had happened in that circle. I had cried hard that night, I thought. I had felt the most loved and loving and supported and supportive I had ever been in my life. It was the saddest and happiest experience of my life, by far the best. It was surreal. I also had cried, I reflected, because I always could never quite figure out who I loved, and I cried for all the times I had thought hard about it and beaten myself up about it. Now, I knew. I loved them all. They were my family, and I loved them.
First, we split into Gender Circles. The Moon Circle for female-identifying people, the Sun Circle for male-idenifying people, and the Stars Circle for truly anyone in between. I attended the Moon Circle, and we talked about what it meant to be a woman, relationships, and answered anonymous questions on slips of paper. We could hear screams from the Sun Circle and joked about them being battle cries. When the circles united, many of the men were crying. We would soon learn that they have discussed what it meant to be a man, and how they often felt like they must supress their emotions. They then expressed the thick and thin, tears and screams and all. It was like their vulnerability was contagious. Questions spun around the large circle, between genders. My two best friends next to me had begun to sniffle, one at a time. First, the younger one. She was underage for this retreat, two years younger than me. I didn't know what she was crying about, but I didn't need to. I was strong. I put my arm around her, a little nervous that she would resent. But she leaned into my and cried still, because I knew she needed it. The older one, who I loved, too seemed troubled. I put my arm around her, too, and embraced her. Eventually, both of them lifted up their heads to the whole circle, their tears calming. But I kept holding them. I didn't see a reason to let go, and I never wanted to. We sang around the fire briefly, before a spontaneous idea arose. A handful of people would sit around the circle; they were the ones who needed healing. The others would stand around, singing to them. Telling them they were beautiful, they were okay, they would be okay. No one raised their hands for either role, it wasn't like that. You stepped in if you felt like you needed the healing. I was strong. I was so priveleged, and I was ashamed of it. I had a nice life. No one really hated me. I was really smart in school, really healthy, I had a stable home and my family loved me, and I had a wavering handful of friends. It wasn't perfect, but it was fine. Compared to the others' dead sisters and suicidal parents and broken families and injurious self-harm, I was really lucky. I stepped in anyway. Maybe my problem wasn't external like many of theirs, but it didn't really matter. I stepped in, and I leaned into a random person: I didn't have to know who it was, because I trusted and loved and felt everlastingly supported by everyone here with everything I had in me. And I cried. I am a crier. Always have been. I cry over lost pencils and silly family feuds. But I hadn't cried like this in a while, cried for a real reason, for real grief and sorrow. I cried for my knack of body shaming myself, for endless stress over grades. I cried for every day I cried on the bus, missing this community. I cried for my best friend, who I loved, the one who started out in the outer circle, but then moved to the inner, because she needed to cry, too. I cried because she had showed me the scars and I didn't know why, but I knew she wasn't okay. None of us were completely okay, but we were a little bit more okay. We had each other, and that was really all that matters.
I embraced and leaned into and clutched the hands of who-knows-who. When she moved away, to the one who had felt like a brother to me last year but now turned out to have a crush on her so now ignored me, I followed, because whether he ignored me or not, he would always feel like a brother to me. I leaned on her and wrapped my arms around his shoulders and he rubbed my arm and we all cried, all three of us, all of us. He didn't hate me, none of them did. They loved me, they all did. And I loved them, too. Before I went over to him, he nodded at me. Our eyes met, I made sure they did. I wasn't going to let this pass again. And he nodded at me, slowly, like he was telling me he was here for me. And everything would be okay. And I was like a sister to him, too, even though I was a pain in the ass. That was kind of the point, I figured. The point was, really, though, that he was here for me. That was what his nod meant. And so I went over to him, and he embraced me. This couldn't go on forever. It was over soon enough, and we sang more. We were healed, and we were one as a family. I gave everyone big hugs, everyone. I held on to my two best friends a little bit longer, and my brother, too. I never wanted to let go. That night, the younger one wrote a note to me. Saying how much she valued my support, and how I gave her a space that she could really express her vulnerabilities. She said that all not quite as fancy, though, with fancy words. She said it in eleven-year-old words, with messy handwriting, like me. She didn't dot her i's, either, and that made me really happy. The other one, the older one, didn't write any notes, but that was okay. She wasn't like that. The younger one was like me: yearning to be vulnerable, to adventure, to explore. The older one was energetic but kept all of her problems locked away, inside. And I knew she needed me, or at least she needed someone to know the stories of her scars. I let her know every day that I could be that person, and she said she really appreciated that, but I had trouble believing her. Now, I did. She told me the stories, but that didn't even matter as much as the stories of the whole community, of our tears.
I couldn't fall asleep that night. After we were sung to sleep, I creeper outside and took a seat on the steps. She could always spot the Big Dipper seamlessly, but I couldn't quite figure it out tonight. She wasn't here, either. Instead, I sat beside the fluffy black cat with the gleaming green, beautiful eyes and I watched the faint yellow lantern illuminate the plants that lined the sunbaked paths between the homey buildings. It all felt like a little village. It felt like home. I had been completely alone, last year. It wouldn't be that way this year, I told myself. I would reach out, arrange meetups, call up my self-nominated brother and my friends and I wouldn't be alone. I had a choice, I realized, how to handle my sorrow. This year, I would choose to be myself, even at school. I would choose to call everyone up, and I would choose to smile. This year would be okay, because, as clichéd as it sounds, I would choose love. What I thought about, sitting alone on the steps, was everything that had happened in that circle. I had cried hard that night, I thought. I had felt the most loved and loving and supported and supportive I had ever been in my life. It was the saddest and happiest experience of my life, by far the best. It was surreal. I also had cried, I reflected, because I always could never quite figure out who I loved, and I cried for all the times I had thought hard about it and beaten myself up about it. Now, I knew. I loved them all. They were my family, and I loved them.
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