(authors note: this is a very very very personal essay. read at ur own risk.)
Being in a (girl) friend group—especially in the dwindling years of youthhood—brings complexity and rawness through its tropes, dynamics, and the one friend. The one no one really likes.
Feeling alone in early childhood is not a nuanced reality. Without my mom’s friend-of-a-friend's very structured playdates, my social skills would be the equivalent of a hamster. But it never diminished the ever-changing girlhood. Young girls—AND BOYS!—tend to categorize each other into boxes, which in turn fit into even smaller boxes.
I got anxious after my peers started to value girl-on-girl friendships. I longed for the pillow fights we saw in movies from rom-coms. I wanted to paint each other’s nails and grow up together, experiencing the bittersweetness of Girl World. Naturally, I began to mirror the things the girls in my grade did. One girl wore giant Claire’s bows, so I started wearing giant Claire’s bows. One girl said she was really into One Direction, so I got into One Direction. I started packing my lunches just to get a glimpse of their lives. The other girls didn’t eat public school lunches. They ate natural peanut butter and strawberry jelly sandwiches with 12-grain bread and heartfelt notes tucked in the pockets of their lunch boxes. I begged my mom to give me notes too. This came with the constant desire to have a socially acceptable life. If I don’t acquire it, no one will ever be my friend. No one will ever let me in.
This isn't an unfamiliar phenomenon to desire connection and typicality. Obsessing over boy bands and sharing each other's clothes (or the "tomorrow let's all wear jeans and matching shirts!") is a sacred act.
At my elementary school, girls and boys alike could not wait until sixth grade. There were three homeroom classes, a mixed class, an all-boys class, and an all-girls class. Whoever thought this was a good idea was entirely out of their mind, but if you were an 11-year-old girl in Nowhere, Arkansas, and you went to my school, your first dream was to be in the all-girls class.
(author’s note: my class was the last all-girls class at my school. ever. we were the reason they stopped.)
When I found out I was in Mrs. Forgot-Her-Name's all-girls class, I felt a wave of excitement wash over me. The world seemed to sparkle with newfound potential. I had finally found a place where I could thrive. However, I didn't anticipate the tumultuous terrain of puberty. Moods shifted, boobs grew in, and we started to hate each other. The principal had to have multiple discussions with our class over recess just to tell us how much stress we were putting our teacher through. The constant catfights and turmoil were inescapable.
The first time I felt blended and conformed with my classmates came briskly and died quickly. I was invited to my first sleepover the summer after sixth grade. I had worked all school year doing my own personal networking. I let them copy off my homework for months for this moment. We watched The Fault in our Stars, ate snacks and played games. I had never felt more alive in my life. I felt like areal girl.
The group's notice of me didn't stem from my new mall clothes or my Vera Bradley backpack. I gave them the ego boost I also so desperately desired. I believe they probably knew how badly I wanted to be them. I yearned to fit into their boxes. I looked at them in admiration. I spent the majority of my childhood being the back-of-the-line friend—if I had any friends at all—and I beat myself up over it. They would walk too fast for me, or there was not enough room for me, or they wouldn’t care what I had to say. I started acting out as a defense mechanism. Feeling discardable as a child is gut-wrenchingly heartbreaking.
My junior high and high school years were different. Our first periods were over-and-done-for and there were new things to talk about. French kissing and Burnett’s were what everyone was doing. If you weren’t, you should be. But by this point, I had tried everything yet nothing would stick. No one wanted to be friends with the crazy girl no matter how hard I would try to be fake drunk, self-harm, or have sex with boys I wasn’t remotely interested in. I punched brick walls and took random pills before school at 8 a.m. I tried to find attention anywhere I could. I changed my style a thousand times. I even bought the Anastasia Beverly Hills brow dip.
This same feeling has crept into my adulthood. Whether this is because I feel I don't possess the same talent as my peers, or the fact that the world no longer revolves around painting nails and pillow fights, I've struggled with the inevitable: a different kind of feeling of being not good enough.
My insecurity may lie in obvious circ*mstances such as chronic childhood trauma and the lack of stability. I could be cheesy and overdone by mentioning the little girl living inside of me who wants validation. I am not going to do that.
According to a therapy website, the signs of a victim mentality are easily noticeable. Here are a few I resonate with:
starting to think others are better off without them there
learned helplessness
needing excessive attention
severe self-pity
low self-esteem
Victim mentalities often purge themselves through an unspecified amount of traumatic events and the inability to cope healthily afterward. Someone with this mentality believes that life will always be difficult due to their previous hardships, and they view themselves and the world around them with a constant negative connotation. Some might feel that there is no possible way to ever save them or understand them.
I started heavily drinking around 19-years-old. Whether or not my drunken demeanors resulted in self-diagnosing myself as the ostracized friend, I became more promiscuous, meaner, and increasingly unpredictable. A shell formed over my innocence as if there was anything left for me to protect. Everyone else was getting just as drunk as I was, yet nobody acted the way that I did. I had automatically put myself into a smaller box. I sometimes caused chaos on the weekends. I ruined people’s nights. I just waited for someone to save me. I would cry excessively in front of strangers, unable to keep my composure. The reasons for my tears were never substantial enough to warrant such reactions. My sensitivity was at an all-time high, and anything could trigger me to spiral into self-pity, thinking,
“Oh my god, no one likes me. I am so annoying.”
Navigating this as an adult pairs horribly with the already drastic shift in lifestyle. Some might not even realize they have one—me included (until yesterday)—and the mindset never changes. There’s so much going on at once in young adulthood. My body and face don't look the same as they did three years ago. I'm graduating college. I’ve found myself curating new opinions and ideologies that better fit my new 20-something-year-old mold, and so has everyone around me. This, on top of the constant fear of abandonment, makes a messy mix.The feeling lingers and binds to people and places. Victim mentalities feel like old, unbreakable habits.
I've been carrying it for as long as I can remember. Despite growing older and my mindset changing, the remnants of it still manage to cut deep. However, it's important to note that having a victim mentality doesn't invalidate any negative feelings I may have. So, does this mean that everyone hates me? Probably not.
