I went down to the river today because I needed to remember who I am. Not the version people expect. Not the one who always has the answer or the fuse already lit. Just me. Alone with the trees and the current and the kind of silence you can’t get when other people are around trying to make small talk, or ask what you’re doing next. I don’t always know what I’m doing next. Sometimes I don’t even know what I’m doing now.
But the river always knows. It doesn’t need me to explain.
And standing there, looking at the water slide past like it had somewhere more important to be, I remembered something I haven’t thought about in over thirty years. Camp Chateaugay. Merrill, New York. June 1991. I was eleven years old, already walking around with that invisible weight on my shoulders, the kind you don’t know how to describe at that age but you feel it anyway. It’s in the pit of your stomach, and the back of your throat and the way you stop raising your hand in class because you already know they’re not going to call on you.
The car ride up was long and dominated by listening to my parents go on and on about their expectations of what I was to experience, and the type of kids whom I befriend and network with. And tennis. Tennis was mandatory for me. I didn’t know what they meant, or perhaps I knew full well, but regardless, when we arrived knew I wasn’t one of them. I had short hair and a quiet voice and a look in my eye that made people uncomfortable. I still don’t know exactly why. But I remember arriving, standing there with my beat-up duffel bag, the one that never zipped right, and the smell of pine trees hit me so hard I almost cried. Not because it was pretty. Because it felt real.
And before I even found my cabin or met my counselor, I realized that half of the women who worked there were going to hate me on sight,
After waiting in line at the nurses station with my paperwork in hand to pose for my Polaroid photo under the soft graceful and completely unassuming light that only comes from a 100 watt incandescent light bulb that’s so 1990’s. I put on a fake half smile in my “just in case” picture, which now had a staple buried deep in my forehead, attaching it to my file. I sat down while they checked for head lice, before exiting out of the back, and found the dock. I then walked out to the end of it, walking past the off limits rope as my first act of rebellion almost as if I was being pulled by the moment itself. I didn’t plan to go out on the dock, I just didn’t give a fuck, I could take care of myself. I just needed to look at something that wasn’t another human being trying to size me up or take my mug shot. The lake at dinner time was the much needed refuge I craved.
That lake was still. Glassy. Deep in a way that made you feel like if you stared long enough, you’d see something no one else could. I looked down into the water and for the first time in my life, I felt like I was staring at my own future. I didn’t know what it meant. I just knew.
I saw her standing there like a ghost that had waited patiently for me to catch up. An older version of myself—years ahead, but unmistakably me. She had long hair, the kind that falls loose when no one’s trying to impress anyone. Her shoulders weren’t tense anymore. Her eyes didn’t flinch. She looked like someone who’d finally stopped apologizing for surviving the way she had to.
She was wiser, sure—but not in that polished, “all-knowing” way. More like she’d seen some shit, burned through the worst of it, and came out the other side softer, not colder. Happy, but not loud about it. The kind of happy that lives in the little things—coffee that’s still hot, a front porch that creaks, the sound of river water against rock.
There was this calm about her. Not the kind you fake for other people, but the kind you earn. She looked like she’d lived with a reckless kind of grace—like she’d danced barefoot in parking lots and cried during TV commercials and fixed everything in her house with her own damn hands. Her face had the kind of lines that come from years of laughing and squinting into sunlight and not hiding from it.
She looked free. Not because life had been easy—but because she’d finally stopped carrying what wasn’t hers. And standing there, I didn’t see regret. I saw someone who’d stayed young in the places that mattered. Someone who loved fiercely, forgave slowly, and always kept a few pens and a diary stashed somewhere nearby and accessible, but totally hidden from view.
That was me. Just older. Braver. And finally—finally—at peace.
I wasn’t scared. I was something else. Something quieter. Like the moment before a storm when the air gets too still and you know the world’s about to change.
I sat there for what felt like an hour. Maybe more. The counselors didn’t notice I was gone. Or if they did, they didn’t care. Most of them looked at me like I was a problem they didn’t sign up for. They would follow me with their eyes as I ran off into the woods, away from the camp. They used to have a look of momentary relief, knowing that I’d return for food like I was some stray someone forgot to leave a note about. I was the only girl in my cabin with short hair and no clue how to fit in. They ignored me until they couldn’t, and when they couldn’t, they made sure I knew I wasn’t wanted. That forgotten note needed to be a warning label, as my curiosity and insatiable thirst for adventure drew me deep into the woods behind the camp, where I’d hide deep in the forest to the point that the counselors would give up the search.
But that water didn’t reject me. That dock didn’t care what I looked like or how quiet I was or how confused I felt about everything I couldn’t say out loud yet. It just held me. The air always smelled of fresh pine bark and damp wood. The wind picked up and the lake rippled like it was answering a question I hadn’t asked.
And here I am now, sitting on my land by another body of water, three and a half decades later, and I finally understand what that girl saw.
She saw me.
She didn’t know how we’d get here. She didn’t know that she would soon bounce around through various places in New York such as Long Island, then Plattsburgh, then Middleburgh. She had no idea that she would start out homeless at 16, and somehow, someday, her dreams would come true. I’ve never lived far from water. Not once. It’s the one constant I never questioned. Like gravity, or scars which are an ever present scrapbook of mishaps and misadventure.
My body carries the scars you can see, but the ones you can’t—those are deeper, harder, and more permanent. Still, somehow, I clawed my way through. Maybe it was luck. Maybe it was sheer fucking will. Probably both.
I didn’t imagine my future that day. I recognized it. I just didn’t have the words yet. But I had the feeling. And I’ve learned since then that the feeling is usually right. Even when the world says you’re wrong. Even when people tell you you’re too much, or not enough, or some kind of mistake. I wasn’t a mistake. I was just ahead of schedule.
So yeah, I went back to the time I promised that I will remember the woods all my life today. And I saw her again—that kid on the dock. Eleven years old. Hair too short, heart too soft, eyes already tired.
And ironically, the one they all rejected would be the same girl who carried the woods with her for the rest of her life—not the camp, not the counselors, not the noise of it all—but the way it felt. The quiet. The trees. The ache of belonging to nowhere yet. I wanted to tell her it’s going to be okay. But that wouldn’t be honest.
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