I found myself staring at the ceiling fan in my bedroom, its rhythmic swooshing pulling me into one of those late-night thought spirals. I've always been this way — ceiling fans, laundromat dryers, anything that spins. My brain finds a rhythm and follows it down.
That night it followed me back to fourteen, sixteen, eighteen. And I asked myself: if I could go back — but carrying everything I know now — would I?
Yes. Without hesitation.
Not to fix the mistakes. To be there for that kid who kept having the rug pulled out before she'd figured out where she was standing.
By high school I'd already lived in six different neighborhoods and attended four different schools. September 1976, I started at St. Aloysius in Jersey City. Mid-year, we moved again — out to Secaucus High School. Culture shock is the polite word for it.
The English teacher assigned Catcher in the Rye. I'd already read it at my last school but didn't say anything. I'd learned to make myself small enough to slip into whatever space was available. I kept a journal tucked inside my geometry textbook — no one ever asked to borrow that — and wrote between classes: Day 43 at Secaucus High. Still haven't figured out where I fit.
What I'd say to that girl now: stop trying to disappear. You don't need everyone to like you. Just be yourself and do what you love, alone. The music, the photography, the books. They are all you need — the friends will follow.
The same report cards, every year, every school: Bright but distracted. Could achieve more if she applied herself. Inconsistent effort.
Nobody thought to ask what it cost to constantly recalibrate — new environment, new social hierarchy, new teacher's name, new cafeteria to find. I was using everything I had just to function in a strange place, and they were marking me down for not having enough left over for algebra.
I understand now what those report cards were actually documenting. An ADHD brain — never diagnosed, never named — already wired for novelty and quick transitions, learning to lean into the chaos because the chaos wasn't stopping. Don't get too comfortable. Don't go too deep. Be ready to move.
It became my default setting for the next thirty years.
Home wasn't the problem. Love was there — imperfect and real, the way it usually is. My parents worked constantly. The time they did have with my sister and me, they gave. My sister and I went to movies with my dad — Slaughterhouse Five, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Fists of Fury — killing time while we waited for my mom to get off work. Sometimes we'd go to the mall on 440, eat at Bonanza, catch something like The Pink Panther.
The four of us against the world. Those afternoons are some of the clearest memories I have.
What nobody gave me — not because they were cruel but because nobody had a name for it yet — was an explanation. Someone to say: what you're experiencing is loss. Starting over every two years is grief. The low-grade anxiety of never knowing how long you'd be somewhere before you had to pack again is doing something to you.
The night before starting at my third school in four years, I stood in front of the bathroom mirror rehearsing my introduction. Deciding which version of myself to present this time. The artsy one. The smart one. The funny one who doesn't seem to care too much about anything.
I was brutal to that girl. I catalogued everything that might go wrong the next day, every potential humiliation, every way she might fail. I critiqued her clothes, her hair, the way her voice went up when she was nervous.
Look at what you're doing — you are beating yourself up for nothing. None of those people deserve your dread or your emotions. No one can understand you unless you give them a path to do so. Even then, you have to want to do that, because not all people are worth it.
The pattern didn't stop when the moving stopped. More jobs than most of my friends, more apartments, more fresh starts. The bags never fully unpacked — not literally, but in the way I held everything. One foot out the door. Quick to read the room, slow to commit to it.
There has indeed been an upside to all this constant upheaval — I am very independent, I have done things on my own without fear (most times), I don't get too attached and I prize my freedom.
What I know now: you can build continuity that travels with you. The anchors don't have to be addresses.
I figured that out later than I should have. But I figured it out.