On advice from 18-year-old boys

When I was sixteen, I met a boy whose name was Nick. He was about to graduate from high school and go to USMC boot camp. For the next two years, we wrote letters to each other religiously. This wasn't "before" email exactly, but early enough that we never considered it an alternative. Anyhow, the point is, I still have the letters.

At sixteen, I was a very sad girl. My sister Carla had recently left for college, leaving me at home with mom and dad, except that mom got a job to help pay Carla's tuition, which left me at home with dad. And Dad and I were at each other's throats that year. I was also having trouble with my friends at school and in general feeling isolated and unwelcome everywhere I went. Except when I was writing or reading a letter to/from Nick. I told him how I was feeling, and being the older, wiser, 18-year-old Marine, he wrote back to give me advice. One letter went like this (and to the left, Nick and I, circa 1997):

You keep telling me how you don't know where you fit in. Don't fit it! When you make an effort to fit in, you change at least a small part of yourself to accomodate the group. Don't sell yourself out--even a little--to fit in. Have more integrity. It'll be a little lonely for a while but you'll find that there are others who don't want to fit in as well. Those are the people you want as friends.

Reading this today, it sounds a little cliched, a little trite, a little too easy. But when I read it for the first time during the spring of my sophomore year of high school, I thought it was brilliant.

I've been thinking about this letter a lot lately. About how I'm still just like I was then, wanting everyone to like me and wondering if there's something wrong with me if someone doesn't. Wanting to fit in. Grad school was the first time when I felt like I knew what Nick was talking about in that letter. My friends are odd-balls. In the real world, some of us don't look quite right: long hair, mowhawks, tattoos. Some of us don't dress quite right. Some of us get thrown out of bars. Some of us never get called for a second date. Some of our families think we're weird because we like to sit in the dark and think. But together, we fit. We make each other better.

So I guess it doesn't matter if some people still don't like me.