I was 14, fresh into ninth grade, and already in my second identity crisis.

We’d moved from Washington to California right after elementary school, so at 11, I got the double-whammy of being the new kid and hitting puberty at the same time. Truly living the dream.

In California, I was the girl from Washington, which apparently meant my family were lumberjacks who lived in a mossy cabin, bathed in a river, and ate salmon like other people eat cereal. The Pacific Northwest had this whole “wild frontier” mythos, and I was the mascot.

Oh, and I still had a pixie cut and a unibrow. Super approachable. 🙅🏻‍♀️🥴🙄

I scraped my way through sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. Then the summer before ninth, the glow-up happened. Mom took me for my first eyebrow wax. My hair had grown long. My skin turned golden from the California sun and chlorine. I was maturing into a young woman, feeling confident, and—gasp—actually liking how I looked.

I had friends. I had a social life. I was thriving.

Then my parents—destroyers of happiness—announced I was moving back to Washington with my dad halfway through the school year.

It was cold. It was rainy. And my mom had just bought me all-new school clothes—California school clothes. Which is how I rolled into my new high school dressed for a sunny mall montage scene while everyone else looked like they’d just come back from chopping firewood or fixing a Chevy Impala.

Instantly, I was labeled the “fast girl from California.”

Which confused the hell out of me because… I didn’t even run track.

For weeks, I ate my microwave burrito and Coke alone, sitting against the gym wall like I was in a public service announcement about teen loneliness.

Finally, I asked my family what “fast” meant, and they reacted like I’d just told them I was running away to join a biker gang. My mom stormed into the school demanding answers. The school secretaries—two women I eventually adored—told her:

“It’s her clothes, Diane. She’s wearing California clothes. This is the Pacific Northwest. Big difference.”

Translation: lose the polished confidence, add flannel, look like you could survive three days lost in the woods, and maybe carry a pocketknife for trout emergencies.

So back to the mall we went. Out went the sun-streaked hair—dyed back to “natural” brunette. In came Levi’s 501s, Ditto’s, bellbottoms, flannel, cowl-neck sweaters, platform shoes, and the approved PNW starter kit: jeans, T-shirt, sneakers, minimal makeup, and a vague aura of “I might be able to rebuild your carburetor.”

My grandma was livid. She couldn’t believe her one-of-a-kind granddaughter was being bullied into blending in.

But I did it. And yes, I eventually made friends.

That said, I refused to fully conform. I owned a pair of jeans with one giant zipper that went all the way around—front to back. My mom loved them. I wore them with a skin-tight bodysuit and enough cleavage to make the school hall monitors sweat. No vest, no jacket, no apologies.

By the time I graduated, I realized I didn’t care what people thought. High school was just a pit stop before real life.

But I do still wonder what happened to those jeans. 🤣🤣🤣😈