I've made a lot of Facebook friends. Some of them have come from people I knew long ago, back from high school, or even earlier. Some are people that I was close to, but most of them were casual acquaintances. They're some who I am closer to now than then, whom I wished I had the brains and social courage to have connected better to back in the day.
There are a few whom I considered rivals or even nemeses that I am friends with now. People whom I had sworn that I would never like, whom I now cherish.
But there is one group that I have not let back in, and probably won't. And that is a group of girls that taught me some harsh lessons in what it was like to be bullied, excluded and made fun of.
Fourth grade was a tough year for me. It was the year where my imagination got me in trouble and became a source of incredible ridicule. Anyone interested in more details should seek out the story War of the Witches and the Martian.
But it was not Dona Bow and her close friends, who were the witches in my swirling fourth grade imagination, that were the problem. Dona was never cruel to me, not once that I can recall. There were other kids who relentlessly made fun of me when they found out I thought I was a Martian. They very worst were another group of girls, whose names I will not mention.
That group of girls delighted in making fun of me, but in the cruelest way possible. It wasn't enough to taunt me or bully me. No, these girls thought it was fun for one or more of them to pretend to like me, make it seem like they actually had an interest in me, and if I indicated at all that they I liked them back, and that just maybe I had turned a corner and was coming back into popularity, that is when they changed. They started laughing at me, at my foolishness to think that they could actually like me.
For the longest time, I was like Charlie Brown, thinking that, this time, Lucy would hold the football in place. But every time she would pull it away. You would think I would catch on. Eventually I did, but it took a lot longer than you would think. I was so desperate to believe, it took a lot of soul crushing before my spirit was finally broken.
And a part of me remains broken to this day. I still am reluctant to believe people when they say they like me. I keep fearing they are going to pull the football away.
Luckily, I married well above my station, and I have learned that not everybody plays those kind of games, that real relationships can be built. So, thankfully, within my family I have been able to build up a lot of trust and confidence.
I see the news and it seems to me there is a lot of evil in the world created by men who can't relate to women well, I don't understand the violence. I never will. But I understand where the insecurities come from.
The clock is ticking towards work time. I wish I had a better wrap up. I will revisit, or re-edit, very soon.
In the meantime, let's try to be kind and understanding to each other.
❤
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