The mean girl

I've been having a hard time getting to this one -- the formative event that happened when I was 6 -- because it feels so mundane now. I know it happened, I have processed it and most of all I have already written about it.

Well, I went back and checked. I did write a little bit in October, for one new realization, but that one insight where things really became a lot clearer? I wrote about that in 2014.

That might be old enough to be new again.

So let's go back and take another look.

The vivid flash of memory is about being cornered on the playground in first grade. I was sitting by myself on a rock, and Suzy and a pack of girls stood in a group in front of me, facing me, and she started talking about how fat I was.

For a child who had always felt there was something wrong with her, this clicked: it's because I'm fat! All of it!

There will be more on that tomorrow.

The most recent insight (the October 2020 one) was that although it felt like it was every girl in the first grade, it really wasn't more than five or six girls total. The effectiveness of bullying is often more in what it represents than what it is.

The other insight, from December 2014, was that it fit in with two other events. I had started the year playing mostly with boys, acting out Star Wars and Buck Rogers. There was one girl, Laura, that wore modified Leia braids. She got some attention, but she wasn't as interested in reenacting science fiction movies, so that was my spot.

Then Shawna told Casey that I liked him. Suddenly I didn't have my boy friends any more. That is why I was alone that day, and vulnerable. Then I started to bond with another girl, Keena, but she moved. 

It took a while to recover from that socially. An argument could be made that I never did; I have some really good friendships, but I am not great at small talk or picking up on social cues. This is why I sometimes wonder if I am completely neurotypical, but it could be a lack of socialization. 

This may be why it was important to write about abandonment first. If I have abandonment issues, they are not only my father's fault. Also, this may have meant that the boundary change that sent me to a different junior high than all but about four other students hit me harder, as well as some other things that happened with friends and mission companions. Hold that thought for a few posts.

This is actually a fairly new realization, but I think I started using activities as a buffer for socializing. In later grades there were three guys that I played basketball with at recess and sat with in math. That is not an insignificant amount of time together, but I didn't consider them friends; that would have felt really presumptuous. There were just things that we did together. 

I had some really good friends, but in the absence of that kind of trust, I needed to be relevant in some way to feel like I had permission to be in that space.

Realizing that there were so  many things that I missed makes me wonder what else was there.

Is it possible that there was some jealousy that I was friends with boys? Was that a motivator for Shawna and Suzy?

Was the break with Casey really irreparable? I took rejections to heart pretty immediately and permanently, but could we have been friends again if I had tried? That could have been healing.

Mainly what impresses me now (in a horrifying kind of way) is how adept Suzy was at bullying. I mean, talking about me in front of me instead of to me was so much more effective and dehumanizing. If she'd actually spoken to me, I might have found my spine. I have always thought of this being when I was 6 years old, because it was first grade, but we had probably already turned 7 by now, really. Still, so advanced!

I should be shocked at the meanness at so young an age, but I have seen a little girl going on 3 cut another little girl out with just a turn of her shoulder, and she was really pleased with herself about it. I thought it was shocking, but clearly there are things I just don't get, and I don't even know how you get them. 

I cannot stress enough how much I did not like Suzy even before that day. She clearly had some leadership qualities in her own way, and I know at least one boy who thought she was cute, but I disagreed. (It was Adam though; he wasn't very discriminating, at least not then.) I had a childish certainty that she would not be nice to animals, which says a lot about how I evaluated other people.

I mention that not merely to go off on Suzy (though I can't help wondering if she had other victims, and how many, so if this comforts anyone out there, okay) but because it goes with another realization - already written about a long time ago - where I have been bothered by how much I did not like or admire or enjoy the people who had so much influence on my life. 

It makes sense that my family was a big influence, but one bratty girl at school and three random guys in the cafeteria shouldn't have had such a hold. 

It didn't make any sense to listen to her, except that I had always known something was wrong with me, and that felt more clear than ever after losing my recess friends. 

I saw a tweet the other day:

"If you wouldn't go to them and ask for their advice, then their criticism should never matter."

https://twitter.com/WhiteHotJD/status/1358794350038253568

I think he's on to something.

Related posts:

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2014/12/with-little-help-from-my-friends.html

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2020/10/navigating-hierarchies-in-microcosm.html