August 1994 // Georgetown, Texas
The week fourth grade started, Lauren had a birthday party. Lauren rode my bus, but we weren’t close friends. She was the poster child for small-town Texas good-child: daughter of the high school principal, favorite colors were all three primary colors together, focused on academics and school spirit. I admired her, because she knew who she was at such an early age. The summer of 1994, I was still growing out the bowl cut that only looked good on Demi Moore and wondering if Looney Tunes oversized shirts were still cool or not. I didn’t know. I didn’t know much about myself. But I DID know that I wanted (desperately) to be friends with Lauren and all of her friends.
I misunderstood Lauren’s birthday party invite. I knew we were ending up at the Georgetown Country Club pool (my home-away-from home… my main babysitter… the country club that had it’s hey day in the early 80s and stayed there) for swimming and cake, but I didn’t realize everyone else was going to a pep rally at the high school beforehand. I didn’t even know what a pep rally was. The concept of fourth graders going to a high school football pep rally… in the HIGH SCHOOL GYM… with HIGH SCHOOLERS… it didn’t compute with me. I missed that part of the invite, because I probably saw “school” in the description and skipped over it, thinking I wasn’t going to more school than I needed to.
My mom dropped me off at the pool and I waited… and waited… and waited… I wondered if I had gotten the time wrong. I went inside the club house to use the communal phone (and likely charge french fries to my parents’ account). I dialed 4-1-1 and asked for the number for Lauren’s last name. The operator gave it to me and I wrote it down on a napkin. I dialed her family’s landline phone number, but no one answered. I went outside and sat on the hot plastic white chairs and waited. I didn’t want to jump in to swim yet, because I had put my hair up in a ponytail and tied a white ribbon in a bow around the ponytail, just like I had seen in a Seventeen magazine.
Eventually, Lauren and seven other girls showed up, all wearing matching white shirts with blue eagles across them. Some of their faces were painted. Half of them had blue pom-poms. I had a thousand questions, but mostly…
– What… how… where were y’all?
– The pep rally! It was SO MUCH fun! Why didn’t you come?
I didn’t know why. I don’t know why. But I did know I had missed the whole thing. I had missed the most fun part of the party. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t a part of it.
It was my fault. I did this often as a child: Didn’t pay attention to details and made quick assumptions about things. The amount of times I went to my mom, realizing that a big project was actually due tomorrow…
It was my fault. And/But I was devastated. I immediately othered myself: the girl who didn’t go to the pep rally. Who doesn’t understand how to read an invitation. Who doesn’t have any school spirit. Who doesn’t know how to have fun.
There is so little I understood about life and emotions and physics as a child. I was so sad during Lauren’s party that I wanted to cry—hard, but I didn’t want to cry in front of all of these girls. I thought I had a genius plan: I could cry in the pool—underwater. This way, no one could hear my crying and no one would notice my tears. (I also swam with my eyes wide open for the entirety of my childhood in swimming pools, so the redness of my eyes was not an uncommon sight.)
Mid-conversation, with four or five girls, hanging on the side of the pool in the deep end, right next to the “9 FT” tile, I would push myself down under the water and just sob—huge bubbles floating to the surface. Being suspended in this way, underwater, letting all of my hurt scream out of me in a muffled way, felt exactly like how sadness was made to be expressed. Maybe I should be screaming into a pool more.
I would come up and reenter the conversation with the girls like nothing was the matter. Any time anyone mentioned a cute football player they saw at the high school or a fun song they played at the pep rally, my sadness welled up again and I had to dive down deep in the pool to cry.
August 2025 // Jackson, Wyoming
I’m 40 now. I feel like I can identify and navigate emotions better now. I haven’t cried at a party in MONTHS. But I still cry. And that’s okay. (it’s actually healing: “the cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea.”) But my embarrassing admission is that I’m 40 and I still feel left out in the ways that are my fault that make me want to cry underwater at the pool. I’ve felt it a lot this summer. This FOMO that I thought was reserved for my 20s or for fourth grade birthday parties. I wonder if it’s because I moved back to Jackson, where I have dozens of friends, thus more things to miss out on. Or if it’s because I’ve felt this friend-aissance in the past five years, where my friendships became swiftly more important than they had been. The goodness has made the missing out feel deeply sad and weirdly personal. I spin back to that gangly child in a two-piece bathing suit she had to beg her mom to get her. In an instant, confident and cool. In another, insecure and uncomfortable.
Hearing that I wasn’t invited on a river trip, suddenly sends me. Seeing friends at lunch and thinking “why don’t I ever go to lunch like that?” Instagram posts of trips/shows/dinner parties that I didn’t even know about, put me in my feels. And it’s embarrassing. I’m all the sudden 11-years-old again, wanting to cry underwater where no one can see me or hear me…
During somewhere around my fifth dive down to sob underwater at Lauren’s party, I came up and hung on the side of the pool to find a girl from my neighborhood staring at me.
– Are you okay?
– Yeah, why?
– Because I heard you crying underwater.
Physics. Not my strong suit.
– Oh, you can hear underwater?
– Yeah, watch. Go under with me.
We both took deep breaths and pushed ourselves down under the water. We had a moment of floating, looking at each other, before she screamed at the top of her lungs…
– AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
…the bubbles were huge. We both came up. I said…
– Yeah, I definitely can hear that.
– Why are you crying?
– I’m sad I missed the pep rally.
– Oh, they happen every week! You shouldn’t be sad. We’ll go to another one soon together! My mom can take us.
This friend talked me down in such a sweet way. She didn’t go and tell the rest of the girls how I was crying underwater and what a loser I was (a real fear in elementary school at the time), but instead she calmed me down and helped my FOMO and convinced me we should be practicing doing backdives instead of hanging on the side of the pool and crying underwater
The other night, I was setting up an event for work at one of the fanciest hotels in Jackson. I felt good about the event, but felt sad about not being with my friends at a show on a Saturday night. It was my fault. I knew this was the gig! But/And I was sad. I felt like I was metaphorically suspended, underwater, wanting to cry.
With a half-hour or so before the guest got there, I asked the bartender for a seltzer with grapefruit juice and some lime. We got to talking. He told me he has been sober for eight years and I was enthralled. As someone who recently decided to give up the bad dream of alcohol in my life, I had a thousand questions and wanted to hear all of his stories. We talked and talked and talked. I told him that the longest I’ve ever gone without drinking in the last 19 years was 109 days, spurred by my mother getting breast cancer. This bartender paused and then told me that his own mother was diagnosed with breast cancer last week. I told him how sorry I was. We talked about how scary it is. We connected about the fear and how you’ll never regret going to be with family when things are hard.
There are moments—many moments, unfortunately—in my life where I feel like I should be somewhere else, doing something more. I never feel like I’m where I’m supposed to be and that’s a big problem/theme of my life. But these moments—the kismet moments—of life end up being the lighthouses, the trail markers, the sign posts making me feel like I’m going the right way.
The old neighbor/new friend in the pool in 1994… the bartender at the event a couple weeks ago who saw something in my eyes that knew I needed to talk to a real human and not doom scroll on social media in my downtime at work… the friend who texts out of the blue… the colleague who hears something in a meeting and follows up… the friends… the strangers…
Thank you for seeing me and hearing me cry underwater. Sometimes everything’s okay, even while nothing feels right.
It’s okay to cry—underwater or on dry land. (please know this deep within you… it’s okay to cry.) I hope to be that person (your friend, your neighbor, the stranger) who hears you and sees you and tells you that even though it’s sometimes scary times ahead and sadness is real and the water feels deep and suspending, there is another pep rally next week… and you’ll probably soon discover school functions are pretty lame anyway. Go practice your backdive or go spend more time with your mother.
Quick Hits:
Jam Of The Week: KAYTRANADA – SPACE INVADER.
(it’s a gift when we get new Kaytranada. I love this calming, yet clubby song. “gotta get away sometime…” I feel that. do you feel that? this song is SO GOOD. but also, truly can’t stop having this song stuck in my head these days.)
I Ended Up Buying This Last Night.
(I don’t even know why. as an old coworker used to say, “I love a good bandwagon!”)Ordered These For Back To School.
(I just keep randomly crying, thinking about Marcelline going to kindergarten.)Obsessed With These Napkins.
(they also come in the cocktail variety.)
I End Up Sending These To Ev Every Week.
(HOME has been a big theme for me in 2025. are you finding/feeling any themes for yourself?)How Do We Feel About This Show?
(I wanna like it SO BAD, but I don’t think I do…)I HAVE To Stop Buying Clothes.
(these last two pairs of jeans from Target are giving me joy in my outfits, though. okay, now I’m done!)
Thank you for being here. Summer is slowing down and honestly I love it. I love the suspension of resting under water, in between sobs, lolz. I’m grateful for this little community and the coolness coming.
xxo,
Rachel.
Such a sweet article. So vulnerable! I relate to your feeling of not being where you should be. For me, the feeling I have over and over is that everyone knows more than me, that I’m the ‘youngest’ one in the room/at the table. It’s a bit weird to still feel this way when chronologically I’m often the oldest person in the room!
I dove deeply into this feeling recently and determined the root is growing up as an only child….I WAS the youngest at the table, and likely not valued for my thoughts or opinions. So I’m trying to ground myself more when the feeling comes, and show myself I’m not that little girl at the table with all the grown ups. I’m the grown up now! 😜