For almost all of my childhood, growing up as a homeschooler was extremely lonely.

My family knew very few families that homeschooled as we did, and I lost contact with the few we did know in California when we moved to Colorado when I was around 14.

After we relocated from the west coast to our new home on the other side of the Rockies, just about everybody I knew that was my age either went to public school or private school, so I was almost always the odd man out.

This was exceptionally frustrating and depressing: feeling like an outsider everywhere I went—always—really bothered me, especially because I knew that A) it wasn’t my fault and B) there was nothing I could do about it.

Being a teenager in a conservative, homeschooled family with precisely one social circle (a church youth group) where we had almost nothing in common with everybody else in the group made things feel even worse.

When we left California and moved to Colorado, our parents decided we would start going to a Baptist church, probably because they simply couldn’t find any Mennonite churches in the nearby area, and they figured that was as close as we’d be able to get.

But it really wasn’t close at all: the kids at the Baptist church were nothing like us. They had never even heard of Mennonites before. When I told my new peers about the church I grew up in, they were completely clueless.

“Huh? You’re Mormons?” more than one person asked.

“No, Mennonite,” I’d insist.

“Dude, are you saying your family is like Amish or something? Do you drive around in a horse and buggy carriage?”

It was extremely embarrassing.

So, we were already in the minority purely from a denominational perspective, and now, adding on the additional embarrassment of being homeschooled was just icing on the cake.

The low-intelligence insults abounded:

* Hurr, hurr… so you’re saying your mom’s your school teacher? Who’s your principal?

* Will you take your sister to the school dance? Will you be the homecoming king and queen?

* What happens if you get sent to the office? Do you have to go to your bedroom?

* Are you the valedictorian of your house? Har har…

But it wasn’t just that our lifestyles were different: our family’s values were extremely different as well. Everybody we knew was far more liberal than we were. I still don’t know why my parents chose to keep going to that church, but it was what it was.

At least for the first year or two, my siblings and I were the only homeschoolers we knew in our entire group of friends, but I participated in everything the youth group had to offer despite the stupid jabs from the jerks I met because I was so desperate for friendship and connection of any kind.

Some of the kids I met in Colorado were kind, but almost all of them were public schoolers who had lots of friends and who lived what seemed like fabulous lives that revolved entirely around themselves.

They mostly came from very small families, often with just one or two kids, lived in big houses, participated in expensive sports and music programs, and spent every waking moment of their lives obsessing over shallow, vapid things like dating, wearing fancy clothes, watching tons of TV, and gossiping about everyone else they knew.

When I compared my life to theirs, the thing that stung most of all was that almost every kid I knew, upon reaching driving age, was given a car as a present by their parents.

There was just so much about their lives I couldn’t possibly understand. They went to dances at school, held hands, kissed each other, called each other “boyfriend” and “girlfriend,” watched movies I wasn’t allowed to watch, listened to music I wasn’t allowed to listen to, and were utterly, completely infatuated with “fitting in” and “being cool.”

They were extremely concerned about fashion trends, knowing the top radio hits, reading the right magazines, and going to movie theaters as soon as the hottest new movies came out.

I never understood this or cared about any of it, and it always bothered me that I felt like I didn’t belong in or around the one group of kids that I was supposed to spend time with.

I wouldn’t say I hated these kids my age, but I was certainly unimpressed and often disappointed in them. I couldn’t understand how people could be so completely shallow, so easily amused, and yet be so impressed with themselves for doing so very little. It often seemed like everybody I knew who was my age just fantasized about growing up to be a cast character on the TV show “Friends.”

When I completed the eighth grade and was now high school aged, I remember looking around at all the kids I knew and asking myself: “Do I really think I’ll still be friends with anybody here when high school is over?”

The answer to that was, clearly and sadly, “no.” I was completely different in almost every way from all the kids I was surrounded with. I couldn’t imagine what their lives were like as carefree, “normal” public schooled kids, and none of them had a clue about what my life was like as a homeschooler.

Until one day, when out of the blue, a stranger showed up at our church: a young man I’d never met before who finally seemed to have a few things in common with me… who gave me some hope.

One random Sunday, I met Shane, a relative of one of the boys I already knew in the youth group. His family, for some reason, decided to start coming to our church.

Shane was about a year older than me, about my height, had my same build, and even combed his hair to the side just like I did. He had a baby face that was COVERED in freckles, and he was socially awkward, but there was one thing about him that changed everything for me: he was a homeschooler.

A HOMESCHOOLER.

Just knowing that I was no longer the only homeschooled kid in the youth group (aside from my siblings) made him immediately noticeable and interesting.

Whether he and I had much in common personally or not, I was absolutely going to get to know this guy. We were now the only two homeschooled boys in the youth group, and that alone meant I already had more in common with him than anyone else.

Finally, I could talk to someone else who did his schoolwork at the kitchen table.

Finally, I’d have a kindred spirit who knew what it was like to be done with school by the early afternoon, reveling in freedom long before everyone who went to public school was even released.

Finally, I knew at least one other person who could also make fun of all the weird jargon public schoolers used. Strange words like: intramurals, mock trial, forensics, magna cum laude, hall passes, pep rallies, study halls, enrichment, advanced placement, international baccalaureate diploma programs, and all manner of bizarre concepts that all seemed like foreign language gibberish to me.

I immediately struck up a friendship with Shane. And it seemed promising… at first.

Like most other people I knew at that time, Shane came from a relatively small family: just four kids, which was just under half the size of my family, which had nine kids.

That wasn’t that big a deal, but I noticed that he did seem odd in a way I could never quite put my finger on, and he had a weird sense of humor, but I was just finally relieved to meet someone else close to my age who lived in Colorado and who knew what it was like not having taken ACTs or SATs or not even knowing what those were.

After we got to know each other over the course of a few months, he invited me to his house for a sleepover, and it seemed like my life was forever changed.

His family lived in an enormous, beautiful home on acreage in the Colorado mountains. They had all kinds of toys: a jacuzzi, ATVs, BMX bikes, and lots of other things that made their lives seem incredibly exciting compared to mine.

I could barely believe my good fortune in finding a new friend like this. He and I weren’t a perfect fit when it came to our friendship, but it seemed like we had enough similarities that it still made sense to be friends.

Or that’s what I told myself. I think if I were being honest, I was actually feeling like a woman who’d been asked out on a date by a man who wasn’t especially handsome but who drove a Corvette.

If I had said it out loud, I would have been embarrassed to admit it, but it was simply the truth that I was determined to develop a friendship with this guy, if only for his stuff. I wanted access to this kind of life.

Whenever Shane and I spent time together, I always tried to make sure I went over to his house rather than having him come over to mine. Even comparing our houses felt embarrassing.

He lived in what seemed like a luxurious mansion on a sprawling grassy property in the mountains that had a collection of incredible gadgets. My family lived in a decent-sized house, but it was also filled with people and was on a cramped lot in the city. And we had nothing like ATVs to play with.

His house in the hills had a natural pond out front, complete with a wooden bench next to a giant evergreen tree, and stocked with Asian Grass Carp. In my mind, it looked like it could have been a set for a romantic movie.

My house in the city had a figure-eight-shaped “koi pond” in the basement made of concrete and painted brick that was built in the 1970s and had been completely dry and abandoned for decades. It looked like it could have been a set from a wacky Woody Allen film or a documentary about people with hoarding disorders.

I wanted so badly to leave our house