When I asked my mom to describe what I was like as a child, she told me I never cared what people thought of me. I was content to play by myself, but that might have been an adaptation to my environment. The little street I lived on was connected to a highway—if you drove too fast, you would miss it (sometimes the school bus did). There was the lady who never had fewer than seven dogs at a time, my babysitter and her entire extended family, and a bunch of old people who all looked the same. They were great for buying Girl Scout cookies, but not so much for camaraderie. Daycare and entertaining my younger siblings were typically the closest I got to playdates, and my elementary school friends changed every year, depending on who was arbitrarily put in the same homeroom as me.
My memories become a lot more vivid when I get to the 6th grade, but maybe that’s because I never really forget. I remember the two girls I created a comic book series with (one of whom became my best friend the following year), who decided it would be funny to ignore me and see how long I would follow them around, trying to get their attention. In the 7th grade, my best friend and I walked to the dollar store (our favorite place to hang out) to buy supplies for a school project. We were mummifying Barbies. I came to class the next day, and she told me that another girl’s mom had called her mom and told her to switch partners, so her daughter wouldn’t be left out. My teacher didn’t allow groups of three, so I had to stick wet gauze on a doll by myself, while failing to hold in my tears. Looking back, I’m not convinced that phone call ever actually happened.
Given my somewhat sheltered childhood, it’s no wonder that I never found my place with the kids my age. I could never tell when people were being mean—if they were laughing at me or with me. I seemed to always find myself in trios–that were probably duos I didn’t realize I wasn’t included in– or being best friends with a girl with a big personality whose shadow I always let myself be forced into. This girl was always the “funny friend”, the “social friend”, or the “mom friend”, but what kind of friend was I? Was I the charity case? Was I the pity friend? I might've been the weird friend, but by the end of high school, I definitely became the quiet friend; the one who, in a class of the same 60 kids since Kindergarten, they could never quite get rid of. My little sister tells me that she was always jealous of my high school friend group, but she didn’t know how I felt—caught between the guilt of having everything I thought I wanted, but wondering why it didn’t feel like enough.
In college, I threw myself into academics because I was determined to “make it out” of my small town; to prove it to myself or to others that I could… I’m not really sure. It shouldn't have mattered what they thought, knowing I would never see any of them again. I will never show my face at a high school reunion because I've outgrown them all and have no one to go with. It's a bit weird to suddenly have so much control over your life after years of making choices to appease others. I still find myself uncertain of what role I should take on in friendships, because the greater part of my life has felt like a performance. Who am I when I try to break these patterns of submission? Where is that little girl who was unapologetically herself? Can I still find her after all that I know now?
I crave guidance and direction, and maybe a small part of me craves someone to tell me who I'm supposed to be. I kept thinking I would have it all figured out when I reached this loose definition of “older”, but I woke up at 22 feeling more lost than ever. This year has been a time of picking up the pieces of all the phases and changes I’ve gone through, and deciding what parts of myself I want to take with me into the next stage of my life. There are so many sides of myself I have yet to explore, and childhood interests I’ve reclaimed that bring me closer to the girl I once was so ashamed of—I hope I will have more compassion for myself this time around.
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