Stranger in the mirror

Photo by Noah Buscher on Unsplash

The summer after I graduated from high school, I worked at a Texas Roadhouse. While my friends quit their part-time jobs and packed their cars for college, I stayed behind, claiming that I was “choosing” to take a year off to live at home and save money. The reality was that we didn’t have money for college after the 2008 recession.

There’s something about staying home from college when all your friends leave, how summer bleeds into fall bleeds into winter. Time is strange when you’ve been following a school calendar your entire life. Suddenly, seven am meant nothing. No homeroom bell or geometry teacher was waiting to wake me up with equations. There was only silence in my parents’ basement, dirty dishes clattering in the sink at my part-time restaurant job.

My shifts finished around eleven, sometimes ten if it was a weeknight. After refilling ketchup bottles and cashing out my tips, I’d drive home, the street lights usually all green, wide open for my …