A Wishful Thinker……

Recent events have made me realized, that I’ve changed a lot since my high school days. I know that. I like to think for the better. I remember clearly the days where all around me, the girls would judge each other on their looks. Names like Looser, Geek, Slut, Skank and Whore were thrown around by just about every girl in the change rooms after PE. It was almost like a female bonding session. To say that only the popular girls mocked and ridiculed those beneath them is not fair. For every name they called another girl, the other girl would have just as many to give back to her tormentor, if not more. Everyone had their own “clique”. From as far as I know, there always has been, and always will be. It’s a part of growing up. You have the popular girls; pretty, charismatic, and  more often than not the biggest bitches in the school, because they can be. Other girls live in awe of them. Some want to be them, some loathed them, but we all knew of them.  Then you had the next level. The still pretty and charismatic ones, but these girls, are often not as bitchy as the first lot. These girls have their own group of friends and they don’t go out of their way to make fun of the other girls, but at the same time they don’t try to be any nicer than they have to….unless they need something from the other girl. Then there’s the rest of us. The ones who don’t really belong in either group. There’s the girls who do so well in sports, other girls mock them for being such a “tomboy”, but come PE class, they all hope they get these girls on their team so they can win. The artistic, who rather spend their days dreaming and discussing their next piece of work rather than waste their time talking about make up and boys with the rest of the popular girls. Then you have the intellects. They were smart, and they studied hard. So hard, so many of them have very limited social skills, but when ever you needed to find partner for a science project or another group member, they were the first ones you would go to. Where did I find myself? I hid among all these characters.

My friends from primary school, they were very smart, pretty and charming, so it wasn’t long after we started high school that they soon assimilated into the popular crowd. I was never the best at anything. In fact I was pretty average. The only thing that I excelled at was being shy. I hated being the centre of attention. When ever attention was given to me, I’d freak out and don’t know what to do. In primary school, it was fine. I hid among my friends. They were always prettier and more outgoing, so no one really really noticed me. But when you get to high school, everyone changes. We came from several different schools. Once our class year was only 60 people, now we had close to 200. No one knows each other anymore. Over the summer holidays, friendship dynamic change.  Girls who were best friends from the age of five suddenly find that their best friend had changed so much, they no longer get along the way they use to. A few weeks into the school year, and you realized that just about everyone has a new group of friends. It wasn’t long before I found myself with a new group of friends. Looking back now, I don’t know what attracted me to this group or them to me. But through out my time at high school, it was through them that I learned about the trials and tribulations of friendship, as well as seeing the very best, and the very worse of the female mind. Like I said, I always hid. I was the girl who no one noticed. I didn’t really excel at anything, and I never tried to get myself noticed. I had my friends and I was happy with that. My parents were strict with me when I was growing up. No sleepovers, no unchaperoned parties, no friends who they never met the parents to before. Being me, I was too scared to incur their wrath, so I would find my frustrated friends asking me for the hundredth time to come to their house this weekend for a sleepover while their parents were away, while I feared my parent’s reaction to it all.

Needless to say, hiding from all the attention can only work for so long. Before long, we were changing again. Us girls were slowly growing into women, and that is where it all gets worse. There were the girls who developed early, it wasn’t long before they realize that they could use this to their advantage and manipulate the boys into doing what they wanted. They dress and acted in a way that they wanted people to know that they are now a woman. But mentally, they were still children. The did what they did so they can get their own way. Those who did not fall for their tricks, they would mock relentlessly. I unfortunately was the target for a lot of this. I can still recall a time when we were left in a class on our own. It wasn’t a regular class, so the majority of the others in that class were people I didn’t really  talk to. I think I had one friend there. I listened quietly in the back of the class as they discussed their weekend antics, and all of a sudden one of the girls noticed my friend and me in the back. They turned the entire class’ attention to us while they quizzed us to humiliate us. Luckily, this only last for a few minutes before the teacher came back in. But that was all it took. It wasn’t long before they had picked us as their new targets, and unashamedly tried to make our lives a living hell. It was probably because of this that I met one of my friends. She was new. From South Africa. The popular girls were very curious about her. Like them, she developed early, but like us, she didn’t’ care what she looked like, and she never tried to use her looks to manipulate anyone. She hung out with the popular girls for awhile, and it was during one of those times when she saw them attempt to pick on us that she noticed me. She stood up for me, and during class one day asked why I took their crap. Before long, we started talking to each other a bit more.  Soon we were friends, and she stopped spending time with the other girls, and they found it odd. The teasing relented abit, and it wasn’t long before things went back to the way it was before. They left me and my friend alone, while they went to look for  a new target.

It was through this friend that I went through my changes.  She showed me how to stand up for myself, and I learnt that I didn’t always have to hide. She introduced me to her friends from outside of school, and would invite me to her house after school. Around my parents she was sweet and polite, and as a result, my parents liked her. So when she invited me to her house for a party one night, my parents agreed. Having met her mum before they were fine with it all. So on the night they dropped me off at her house. Her mum greeted us at the door, but a bout half an hour later, she went to work. I wasn’t aware that her mother was going to work (She was a nurse). The moment her mother left, she went to the kitchen pantry and pulled out the bottle of sherry her mum had put aside for cooking and we drank all of it. By the time my parents came to pick me up, we had drunk the sherry (which was full) and another bottle of JD, that she had somehow gotten. One thing I knew about this girl was that I don’t ask questions. She had her way with people, and she ended up getting what she wanted though one of her many connections. Because she knew what my parents were like, and the others were staying over, she made all the drunken girls stay in her room and keep quiet while she walked me out. My parents decided, seeing as we were so well behaved, decided it was OK if I went to her parties more often, and they were fine with my other friend’s dad driving us rather than them having to do it all the time.

The thing I liked most about this girl, was that she was the first person that I had met, who never cared what others thought. She’d do what she herself felt was right. She never judged anyone by the way they dressed, looked, or what the rumours going around about them. She judged them as they were. If they were nice, she was friends with them. If they were mean. She ignored them. The people and things she introduced me to, some people might be shocked, but it made me realize, that even though some people have a “dodgy” side to them, they weren’t all bad. They could be decent people too. Yes she dabbled in a lot of “substances” but as a person, she was one of the most decent people I know. The friends that she introduced me to, were the type of people that sometimes you don’t talk to because they seem dangerous or scary.

The last time we hung out together, she was going through a dark phase, and wasn’t getting along with her mother. She shut herself off from the rest of us. And before long we had lost touch with each other. But I ran into her last year. She’s since had a baby, and she seemed much happier. She was also out shopping with her mum. So whatever happened during that time, I think she’s happy now. I hope she is. I know I can honestly say, she was one of the few people that had influenced me a lot. =)