#uppity

My own experience in middle school when my family moved to a new town was much the same. The older mean girls all took one look at me and blocked me out of their cliques. During group activities, they would talk amongst themselves, blatantly ignoring me as if I wasn't there. They made it clear I was not welcome. It was a long time before I made any friends, whom were fellow outcasts and misfits like myself, for our "lame" clothes and frizzy hair.

Flash forward a few years to when I finally got my social footing in this new town. I knew everyone and everyone knew me. Then, in walked a new girl. She had the same "lame" fashion, the same frizzy hair, and was wearing the most "uncool" glasses ever made. The way the mean girl cliques had treated me still stung like it had happened yesterday. With that in mind, I went out of my way to befriend the new girl, take her into my circle, and make her feel welcome like no one had done for me. I didn't want her to go through the same loneliness I did.

The possibility that my efforts could backfire in my face never occurred to me. Prior to moving to this town, I had never been bullied, so I was pitifully naive. The new girl and I emailed back and forth for many months. It was all pretty normal at first. But as time went on, she became increasingly "judgy" about everything I liked. I would tell her that I liked a certain singer and she would counter with, "Oh, I would never listen to music like that." I would say that I liked a certain dessert and she would write back something along the lines of, "That's okay for you, I guess. I don't eat things with that much sugar." Looking back at those e-mails, now, her tone was dripping with condescension, but at the time I was just so happy to have a friend to talk to that I didn't notice.

One day, she stopped replying to my messages. She stopped sitting with me at church. She started hanging out with the cool girls. From that point on, in all of her interactions with me, she treated me with a haughty, superior attitude. This sudden change coincided with her becoming "fashionable", though she now posts old photos from those days and laughs at how dorky she looked even after her "glow up". I learned years later that she also formed a clique at her school and excluded other girls so she could feel superior to them. Exactly the way I had been treated when I moved here. I felt so defeated. I tried to welcome her, to help her adjust to this new place, and she just used me as an in-road to form her own cliques.

Jump ahead a few years to early high school. Another new girl crossed my path. Still shockingly naive and forgetting what happened last time, I did the very same thing: I took her under my wing and tried to help her settle in. Wouldn't you know she did almost the exact same thing as the first girl? Except this one manipulated me and tried to come between me and my best friend, as she formed her own toxic little clique. That's a whole big story of its own and it doesn't end well.

You would think I would have learned my lesson by then. But it took once more to traumatize me enough that I would have a healthy wariness towards newcomers. Same thing: new girl, I befriend her, and she uses that position to backstab me before forming a clique that excludes me.

Third time's the charm. I've been backstabbed by enough newcomers that now I give them distance and a cold attitude until they prove to me they are safe to be around. It's sad that it has to be that way.