I Fell in Love With My Camp Counselor
Anyone who has been to sleepaway camp can agree on one universal truth: a camp romance is unlike most love affairs you’ll find in the hallways of high school or that of dating apps. How pure it is, too—all your surroundings in agreement with one another to keep life semi-balanced inside a fence-enforced bubble?
Summer camp can best be likened to some kind of metaphysical space, one that promotes free expression and the absence of life's mundane grievances. But isolation isn’t always what we need as human beings. In fact, the pandemic helped most understand why isolation can be the exact opposite of what we humans want—especially when isolation holds the things you aren’t ready to confront.
For me, I wasn’t ready to confront my sexuality. It was the summer of 2019, and the Maryland sun rose each day hot and heavy, nowhere near comfortable enough to bask in. Fresh out of my sophomore year of high school, I was anxious to return to the familiar mountaintop on which my sleepaway camp sat for my seventh summer as a camper. My friends and I were particularly excited for the upcoming session, however, because of the newfound freedom and responsibility it promised; we were finally of age to help counsel younger campers and lead activities in our respective areas of interest.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, I was in for a complete 360 in perspective. Something new and old was juxtaposing within me, stirring up my insides, but I couldn’t put a finger on what yet. That summer refracts in my memory like a broken mirror, its shards scattered, dependent on me to piece together my past.
The drive up to camp was always magnificent. You wouldn’t sleep the night before because you would be jittery with excitement, you wouldn’t eat because the flurried butterflies in your stomach would gobble up any lick of an appetite. It was late June, and the fact that school was actually over had just begun to settle in. With a hefty suitcase and duffel bag in the trunk of my car, my eyes traced the sweeping mountainous views, the familiar dips, and cradles of the hilly landscape.
And because my friends and I were old enough that particular summer, we shared six counselors throughout our unit; two assigned to each bunk of girls. But on the first day of camp, one counselor caught my eye. They were Israeli, one among the many international folks who flock to the Maryland mountains each summer for work. With their long, coiled dark hair, I recognized them immediately; this counselor had been working in our camp’s music department the summer before, always percussing away on the drums during a camp-wide event. I admired them, even before I knew them.
It didn’t take long before I developed a full-on BFC on my new counselor (camp-slang for a “best friend crush,” or someone who you want to become friends with). I’d make a point—whether it was conscious or unconscious, I can’t say—to talk to them, to be near them, to exist in their space. Simultaneously, the session was in full swing, and the fenced borders of sleepaway camp enveloped me once more as they did each year. I was independent again, and while I had my closest friends by my side, I reveled in the feeling that I could live for myself and myself only. I was safe.
But as one week turned into two, something switched in me entirely. Even now, I can’t pinpoint the exact moment that I realized my feelings for my counselor were in fact romantic. Instead, I recall the nights I laid awake in a wooden bunk bed, staring at the clear sky through the window beside my pillow, wondering what was wrong with me. I recall the daily journal entries I wrote to record memories, but with discrete notes scrawled in the margins referencing something we had laughed about earlier that day. I recall the flipping sensations in my gut that would only arise when we locked eyes or when they entered a room.
Something had been juxtaposing within myself, and it was difficult to acknowledge the reality of what was rustling inside me. Though I had only just turned sixteen, I was sure that I was straight as a board. I’d been crushing on boys since kindergarten and had various flings ever since. Every ounce of my being wanted to dismiss the feelings that began to surround my counselor, but it soon became all I could think about. In such a confined environment, there was nowhere else to look but inward unto myself.
My sleepaway camp loves tradition, and its campers learn to love its traditions quickly. The place both visibly and metaphorically reflects the ninety-nine years it’s been around for—not only are the buildings scattered around the land evident anachronisms, but the air carries an antiqueness that demands respect. To put it plainly, sleepaway camp makes me feel like I’m transcending decades.
Still, with a ballooning sense of self-doubt, I sought clarity. And what better place to find clarity but in the company of mountainous sights and Jewish folklore? I soaked in my surroundings that summer in a way I never had before. By recognizing the rich history of my second home, I managed to channel a sense of acceptance within myself. I gained a new appreciation for tradition, but I also uncovered a liking for breaking it. A knack for bending the rules, for shattering preconceptions. What I found within the beauty of camp, I found within myself; I, too, was allowed to push past the assumptions I had previously made regarding my sexual identity.
I had forecasted my seventh summer to be one to remember, but there was no way that I could be prepared for what followed next that summer. The knowledge that my counselor and I could never exist together in the way I wished we could was a fact that made every day more challenging than the last. I yearned to accept this new facet of my identity, but still, I struggled.
I said goodbye to them on a Friday morning with the mid-July sun peeking through green treetops and kissing the warm pavement. Everyone’s throats were raw from crying—the distance we all knew that would soon be placed between us and our friends drifted quietly above our heads. When my parents came to collect me, my counselor hugged me tightly and told me that they loved me. But as I found myself watching those familiar dips and cradles of the hilly landscape retreat behind me as my parent’s car whirled down country roads, I mused about what I had discovered in myself. The good, the bad, but particularly what camp’s isolation gifted me with; a strength in my identity that could transcend the dips and cradles that were sure to come my way in the future.