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rocks-are-pretty-odd · 6 years

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omg i hope things get better for you.

Just letting things out.

Four times. Four times I thought I found a place where I belonged. Four times they excluded me, and when I confronted them suddenly I was the bad guy.

I don’t know what I’m going to do this time. I don’t know where I’m going to sit at lunch now, since I was absent for a day to get away from it, and now it’s spread all around school. No doubt everyone thinks I’m a psychopath when all I wanted were some friends.

Let me start from the beginning.

In sixth grade, I transferred away from the friends I’d known since preschool. I had a bullying issue, but it was sorted out and through the whole thing I had a large, tight-knit friend group to support me. We were close.

I guess over the summer things fell apart, and it was partly because the following year I got a boyfriend and that threw everything off-balance. Our friend group dissolved, and my boyfriend and I were closer than anything. We spent all our time together, save for Tuesdays where I’d go to my girl best friend’s house. Eventually girl best friend pulled some fake shit on me and we stopped talking.

Basically, she and all her new friends she found while I was off with my boyfriend pulled a prank on me where they all ran into the bathroom and locked me out, then pretended they weren’t there to leave me alone. I was pissed, because she had done something like this many times before and that was the last straw.

Then came eighth grade, when my guy best friend went off to high school and we grew further and further apart. He didn’t care about me anymore. He was more focused on his girlfriend, and I guess that brought to reality what I must have done to my old friends. I tried really hard to keep him close to me even though we were going to different schools, but when the news broke that he was moving literally a thousand miles away the next summer, he said he no longer had time for me and I cut him off. (P.S. Rachel Young is low-key based off of him.)

Continuing to move somewhat chronologically, at the same time, my boyfriend and I broke up due to complications with his mother hating my guts. Yikes. What was left of our friend group picked him over me, and I was left alone to find someone else to hang out with. So where did I go? The popular kids.

Most of them didn’t really care about me. One boy and I already knew each other because we were both percussionists in band, and rivals for the “best musician” spot that wasn’t actually a thing except in our heads. So we talked to each other every day, and his best friend who was in my class talked to me too. Things always felt off, though. She and him were always asking me to leave so they could talk about private things. I didn’t mind, because they still insisted I was their friend. The rest of the popular kids labeled me as a third wheel who was desperate for attention. Oh well, it didn’t really matter to me, as long as I had someone to talk to. To this day, I still don’t know if that boy and girl were ever really my friends. The last time I saw him was our graduation, when I was sobbing and he pulled me into a tight hug and promised he’d hang out with me over the summer. The next day he removed me from Snapchat.

Over the summer, I traveled to Italy for a music festival with a pianist friend of mine, who I developed feelings for. He was a lot like my ex-boyfriend. Kind, smart, funny, and a good foot taller than I was. I’d often rest my head on his shoulder or use him as a footrest just to test the waters and because I thought it was funny. He never told me to stop, and one time somewhat encouraged it by sharing a box of wafers with me while we watched videos together in my practice room. There was another girl at that camp, and she also had feelings for him, but she had only known him for a few days. She acted like she knew everything about him, but I’d known him since we were 12. It wasn’t fair, and I’ve been known to be the jealous type. We both kind of hated each other, and my pianist friend did his best to keep everyone on good terms. On the plane ride home, when I leaned my head on his shoulder like always, he put his arm around me and intertwined our fingers, running his other hand over my hair.

He says he doesn’t remember doing that, but I know for sure it wasn’t a dream. Anyway, he ended up going to the same high school as a lot of the members of my old friend group. One of those old friends told him I said hi, and he had kind of a negative reaction, so I asked him about it. He promptly sent me an essay-length text about how he’d always hated me, and I came on too strong, and I had a terrible work ethic and didn’t play piano well at all, and I was the embodiment of every one of his pet peeves. Our other pianist friends got after him for saying those things, and even his teacher knows and is constantly telling him to be nice to me. Let’s just say he and I always have a weird, competitive dynamic when we see each other. His mom and younger brother still love me though, haha.

So here we are, high school. A new place with tons of potential and a world of possibilities. What happened that made everything go wrong? Well, they messed up my schedule and put me in band rather than choir. I was no longer interested in playing percussion other than piano, and the level of band they put me in was too low for me anyway. It took two weeks to get it changed, and when it did happen, everything changed, including my lunch period.

Let’s make something clear: when you are teenagers at a new school, everyone has already found their friends two weeks in. If you haven’t, you’re done for. So suddenly I was an outcast among everyone, because I was surrounded by entirely new people in new classes with new teachers. It was like transferring just ten days into the semester.

So I went to the place where I might be most successful: the popular kids. Everyone knew them, and they didn’t seem to mind me being around. We actually hit it off pretty well at first. But the more I sat with them, the more they’d exclude me from the conversation. It hit the last straw when they promised to save my seat and then gave it to someone else while I was in the lunch line, leaving me with nowhere to sit.

I texted the group chat later and asked why they did that, and said I’d appreciate if they included me more. One of them snapped, and suddenly I was told not to talk to them anymore. I was heartbroken, but I went to the next table over.

Things weren’t as bad there. They still didn’t talk to me very much, but they didn’t mind me being around and they included me in some conversations. Then I got an anonymous message telling me I didn’t belong there and to leave. So I did, without a single repercussion because I didn’t want to start drama like at the last table.

I sat with the kids I had my first two classes with next. I was excluded once again. Never invited out, never talked to, not allowed in the group chat. When I asked why, they said they “had problems” with me. This made no sense, because I had never done anything to them except be friendly. What did they have to be mad at me for? We seemed to be getting along just fine in class. Why was lunch any different? My one consistent friend throughout the year said they didn’t let me into the group chat because that was where they talked shit about me. I left once again, without saying a word because I didn’t want to fight.

So then my most recent lunch table. Kids who went to the first school I ever went to, but came there after I left. They were so welcoming and friendly and real. They said if I consistently sat with them I could come to their monthly dinner. So I did, because I finally had new people who cared about me, and one of the people in the group brought baked treats every Monday. Things were great. We talked, laughed, played, but they never asked to hang out after school.

That invitation to the dinner never came. They made plans in front of me, and didn’t ask me to join them. I didn’t mind. I told them it hurt my feelings, but we could just hang out some other time. I asked them to fill me in on conversations, and they did most of the time, but now it was becoming less and less of an occasion. “Oh, you’re in the advanced class, you wouldn’t understand.”

So when I saw that they made a group chat without me, I asked why. “What? There’s no group chat,” one girl said. I could see it open on her phone screen right in front of me. She lied to my face, and thought I’d be okay with it. I cried in the locker room during PE yesterday. Two girls came up and comforted me, and they said I had to say something because this wasn’t fair.

So I did! I texted that girl who lied to me and asked why she and the table would do something like that when I’d had the same thing happen three times to me before. I asked why they always excluded me when they accepted other new members so easily, and guess what happened?

She told me they were never truly my friends and only faked it because they felt bad. She said I always assume I’m invited (I never do, and even explicitly stated once that it hurt my feelings that I wasn’t invited) and that I make everything about me (apparently wanting to be part of the conversation with your friends is self-centered). I cried so hard that night, and it took everything in my power to keep from hurting myself again like I did so many years ago when I lost my father.

I saw that she screenshotted the conversation, and I knew she was sending it to people and twisting my words around. I couldn’t go to school. Not where everyone I knew was against me.

So I stayed home today. Suddenly one of my few real friends texted me and started arguing with me over nothing. We made up, but it was clear how easily everyone was turning on me. She said she was sorry that she snapped at me like that, but people have been talking about me today and she believed them. Another girl from my table says I have to come to her locker before lunch to talk things out and fix this issue, but she was one of the ones my friend said was talking about me. I don’t know who to trust anymore.

I don’t know if I can trust anyone anymore.

How am I gonna walk through the halls at school tomorrow, with all the knowing glances in my direction?

Where am I going to sit at lunch, when things inevitably go downhill even more?

I can’t transfer schools right now, and won’t be able to for the next year and a half. I’m done for. I’m alone, with maybe a good three friends left.

I’m scared to go to school tomorrow.

I’m so so scared.

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