I was the most confident kid starting school that day. I had been around the school since before it had opened. I went to kinder with a bunch of the kids in my class. I loved the idea of learning. I was so happy and excited. The year progressed. I never had a best friend, or even a group of friends I would hang around with everyday. I would hang around with whoever wanted to hang around with me. Sometimes I would go up to random older kids playing games and ask to join in, a habit that continued later on.
Grade one came. I can honestly say this was the best year of primary school for me. I had a group of close friends I hung around with everyday. I remember making up silly games and running and laughing and playing with bugs and generally being kids. The only downside came when the year ended and I was separated from them all. The ones my age were in a different class, the ones a year older were in a whole different area
Grade two was a good year too. The grade ones in the class loved me. I had 3 close friends in my grade. It was the year a teacher started to notice I was smart and gave me harder work. It was the year someone started to notice I had issues with basic spelling. In hindsight it was the calm before the storm
Grade three came. I had my 3 close friends. Then the teacher asked me to look after the new girl, a year older, but who had similar interests. After a couple weeks she decided she liked my friends but no me. An attitude the rest of the girls her age also took on. They gave me hell. I wasn’t cool enough to play with them. I wasn’t allowed to join their clubs or trade dolls with them. I didn’t realise at the time but my relationship with my 3 best friends was deteriorating too. They were taking advantage of my trust by lying to me, and choosing to ignore me. The only good thing that happened this year was the arrival of one of the few teachers who really believed in me.
Grade four was just bad. Once again the new girl came and I was asked to look after her. Once again she decided she didn’t like me. My two “best friends” decided they didn’t really like me either. They would cut me out. Tell me they needed to have a private chat and tell me to go find something else to do for the 40 minute launch time. I resorted to entertaining our “buddy” class. A group of prep students. It got to a stage the teachers had to separate us in the classroom. One day after a particularly emotional fight we were all kept after school. After our teacher (the one who arrived the year previous) told us all that our behaviour was unacceptable kept me back longer and told me he was worried about me because I was clearly being victimised. I wouldn’t hear it. They were my best friends. We just had a fight. The fights happened almost daily by the end of the year. I would get so worried about lunch time I would make myself feel sick so I could either stay home to begin with, or get sent home. For a kid who still loved school and learning it was unfathomable to my parents that I suddenly wanted to stay home more than anything. The peak was the day the vice principal called the four of us to her office and said “you’re all acting like little.... witches.... I think we all know what the other word is” then took us to meet her daughter who was finishing her last few days of primary school fighting with her best friends. That day we all walked back to our classroom in tears and vowed not to fight again. We didn’t. I barely saw them the last couple days of school.
The next year my mum requested I be in a separate grade to my old friends. I needed a clean start. The problem was our school had a policy of keeping groups of people together. I was put into a room of established friendships. I was an outcast. I had no real friends that year. The people I was closest with weren’t in my class and periodically seemed to leave the school over the course of the year.
Grade six came and I was determined to have friends. I was determined to have someone to miss when I left the school. I thought about it and knew the class clowns always had friends. So I started acting silly. I started getting hyperactive and doing dumb things to make people laugh. It didn’t win me friends. It only annoyed people. I didn’t realise this. Then there were the other girls my age who decided it was their turn to take advantage of my trust and tell me about things they were interested in. Treating me like nothing a lot of the time, and exposing me to things I shouldn’t have seen at age 12 (“hey! Let’s go on chat rooms and get people to have cybersex with us!”)
High school came. I was forced to make new friends. I clicked with one person. And thank god it was the one person I am still friends with now. I was in a school full of strangers. In a year of 200 students 6 came from my school. I was desperate to be cool enough for everyone to like me, but too naive and set in habits of acting stupidly to ever fit right. It took a couple years but I found a group. I had friends I hung out with often. It was strange to me. After a couple years I realised that these people weren’t my closest friends. They talked about me not only behind my back, but while I was there too, but hey they were my friends. Then I met this group of kids who didn’t fit anywhere so they fit together. I fit with them. Those kids are some of my best friends. We were united by the fact other didn’t get us, thought we were weird or treated us like shit.
From grade one to the end of year 11 I also danced. From grade 2 on, with one group of girls. The year I was in grade 5 they decided they all hated me too. They treated me like dirt. From then on I wasn’t good enough. I went through a very awkward stage. Teachers started picking on me. I was shoved in a corner. The others picked up on it and shoved me in a corner socially. A huge blow came when the girls I had always danced with got moved up to the most senior group, while I was left down with girls 2 years younger. That only added fuel to the fire. Then the days that stand out most to me. Teachers yelling in a whisper from side stage at me “SUCK IT IN!!” The polite conversation where “you’re not fat but you need to suck it in”. Then the hugest, in the middle of rehearsal in front of the whole local theatre company, while being the only dancer who could it into their costume “EITHER SUCK IT IN OR GO ON A DIET”. The teachers I admired and trusted had a fat complex and I was fat (I wasn’t. I've never been above a size 12, and at that stage I was a size 10, I’ve just never been a pin either). I got left in the corner of every performance. No matter how hard I worked I wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t until my very last year when a new teacher came and put me in the front the others started to notice that I’d worked my butt off and wasn’t the awkward 12 year old anymore. The girls started to realise I wasn’t the socially awkward kid anymore. People wanted to know me. I got invited to parties. But I still knew no-one there really believed in me.
Now? Now I have emotional baggage to last a lifetime. I'm scared making friends. I’m socially awkward. I live in fear that people I consider friends really don’t like me, but they don’t want to hurt me by telling me to my face. I spend so many nights curled up analysing everything everyone says picking out all the things that hint that that hate me. I worry that I’m going to be left alone again.
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