Where I Stood (Laurie Faria Stolarz)

The topic this month is teenage insecurity. Looking back, I didn’t have a single, clean insecurity as a teen. I had a whole ecosystem of them, and they fed each other. 

For starters, I was insecure about money. I went to a private Catholic high school, which meant my mom was working extra hours at night to keep me there. I felt the economic difference—in a way I hadn’t before. My peers often talked about fashion, designer brands, what kind of car they were going to get, or where they were traveling for school break. Those were normal conversations, casually dropped into the day. Meanwhile, I'd never vacationed anywhere, my clothes were secondhand, and my car was a 1978 Chevy Nova, passed down by my grandmother, that barely started when the temperature dipped. 

After school, while others were partaking in sports, clubs, or going to the mall, I stood at the customer service desk at the local grocery store where I worked, answering questions, processing returns, cashing checks, and selling lottery tickets. 

Apart from money, my appearance was another problem, especially my body. I was constantly restricting calories. I'd skip breakfast entirely. Then, at school, lunch wasn’t really lunch. Most days, it was a boxed juice and nothing else—partly to save money, partly because I was trying to be “good.” 

My hair felt like its own issue—limp, lifeless, dull. I did what I could at home—boxed dye, DIY highlights, guesswork. One time it went so wrong: the color completely stripped out. My brother drove me to the drugstore that night and we stood in the aisle looking for something—anything—that might fix it. 

Appearance aside, I was insecure about my intelligence. In class, I could disappear without leaving my seat. A teacher would be talking, or I’d be reading, and then I’d come back to myself pages later, realizing I hadn’t absorbed anything. Fifty pages, gone. Everyone else seemed to know how to stay present. I didn’t. Looking back now, I probably had (have?) undiagnosed inattentive ADHD. But, regardless of a label, I had to learn how to learn, eventually adopting a bunch of strategies and tools to get me through and eventually to excel. 

After a while, all of these things started to point in the same direction--to the fact that I was always adjusting, trying not to stand out for the wrong reasons.

I didn’t think of it as insecurity. It just felt like knowing where I stood.