Welcome to strangers from KCW and Radiotopia.

I'm Leah Tau.

And today's story is about the common desire to fit in and the equally common struggle to actually make that happen,

you know, to be part of a group and have a sense of belonging

without losing oneself. Elisa could never really figure this out. She always felt like an

outsider, and one day, in recent years, she took refuge in an unlikely world that did not fit

her public persona, or even her general demographic.

And the things she learned in the process continued to surprise me when she shared this little

story with me. Each time I thought, aha, I know where this is going, it went somewhere else.

So I say, let it take you wherever it takes you.

And we'll talk about it after, okay?

Here is Elisa.

I lived a pretty normal, privileged life until the first grade.

And then we bought a VW van, and then we ended up on a hippie commune.

We didn't have running water, so we'd haul water about a kilometer from the stream.

And I was only bathing once a week.

I mean, I was literally a dirty hippie.

And the hippie commune was close to a very, very conservative mining town.

And I was the only kid from the commune that actually went down to school in the valley.

I think the people in the town saw the hippies as this alien force coming in. I think they probably saw them as having

privilege, and there was more privilege. People on the commune generally didn't work. And I think

they saw it as an attack on their home. My experience of it was being beaten up a lot.

...