I think I was just injected into society this way.
My best friend betrayed me in kindergarten. I guess she needed a new best friend. I was left with her "old, old best friend". I remember hanging with my new and forced "best friend", Caroline, on the giant snail shaped monkey bars on the Westhill Elementary playground and thinking, she is so annoying.
I went to her birthday party that year and she threaten all of us, saying we needed to eat her birthday snacks when she wanted us to, the way she wanted us to .. or we couldn't ride her birthday ponies.
I don't think I rode the ponies.
I also went to my old and truly best friend, Veronica's, birthday party the same year, but her new best friend, Jennifer, got her the coolest present: A My Little Pony, named Jennifer, so that Veronica could have a little piece of her where ever she went.
I was definitely out then. I don't even remember what I got her but it definitely wasn't that cool.
I couldn't wait to move on.
But then in 3rd and 4th grade a group of my "friends" decided I wasn't cool enough to be hung out with, despite the fact that I had started a musical revolution by introducing them all to "The Phantom of the Opera", (which I had seen that year), led our "Little House on the Prairie" game play revolution with authentic prairie costumes and led the investigation into the strange gang signs painted on our wooden playground that must be clues to a long lost cold case murder.
Okay. Well, maybe, unknown to myself, I was weird.
And to boot I hated everyone's favorites: kick ball and dodgeball.
In any case, once again I was an outcast.
It wasn't that I couldn't make friends.
I had a group of friends that I made at my small high school. There was only 20 people in the clique-y class, however, so when you become an outcast, you really are out.
I had a friend, Carina, and we seemed to click. I enjoyed her company, lets just say that. But her mother, was deaf, erratic and truly couldn't take care of her. She spent a lot of time living under the roof and with the family of our other mutual "friend", Erica Easly.
Erica used her.
She got Carina to do whatever she wanted, and used the open doors of her house as leverage.
One day, I stood up for Carina.
What a mistake.
When my mom came to pick me up from school she found a note on the school step, where Erica had been sitting. It read, "Sahale is a wanker." That was the end of that.
I remember when I was on the cusp of dating this boy named Tim, I went out with some friends to a restaurant that he was playing for open mic. I knew that there was something going on between us, because he always wanted me around, but I couldn't really believe that after such a short time, he could really know who I was and what he was getting himself into. I remember sitting at a booth, reading the Chattanooga newspaper, with the sounds of the first performers wafting through the room. It was stuffy in there. Every table was full. Smiling people chatting, buzzing with energy. I remember him smiling at me.. I was wearing hawiian-y print short dress over a pair of rolled up jeans. It was a hot July day and was wearing chacos outdoor sandals to complete the look.
This was me. Kind of quirky, cute. Long hair rolled into a messy bun. Normal amount of makeup. Anything else would have melted right off of me.
It was then that these two girls, they couldn't have been too much older than me, maybe 24-27, came into the restaurant and sat at the bar.
I stared at them. They had long legs. Perfectly shapely, that ended in Rihanna style high heeled ankle boots. Their tan arms, legs.. cleavage that poked from their low neck dresses were visages of smiler body parts I had seen in red carpet photos. Their hair, although not blonde, was a beautiful shade of chestnut…. messy bedroom curls. Utterly sexy. Smoky eyes, perfect complexion. Immediately I felt like a frump. It was like the whole magic of the world around me was cardboard. It collapsed and fell away. Two glaring spot lights squeaked into position over my head. I burned in my seat, though all eyes were still fixated on the performer sitting on the small open mic stage stage. For a couple of years I had tried. I spent an hour or two in front of the mirror, in my academy dorm room, primping… putting on too much makeup.. curling my hair.. but you know what? The girls at academy who got the guys were utterly normal, generally plain. But they were confident, funny… intimidating. People like me, who tried too hard, were just insecure and lost their personality.
I liked more, this new self. I felt lit from within. I knew I was different because I truly was different, more confident.
But there was something about a beautiful girl that I heart-breakingly longed to be. That these girls threw into sharp focus.
When Tim finished his set, he smoothly slinked over to them -- leaned against the bar and in close to whisper in their ears, chatting them up.. flirting. Their downturned, frowning mouths suddenly reversed, now that they were getting attention. He had picked them out of the room just like I had. He wanted to be seen with girls like this. I didn't have to wonder what he meant by his actions.
So, I left.
The air was cooler now that the sun had disappeared. Crisp southern nights, right before the summer's end and beginning fall, are gloriously beautiful. I did this a lot. When I was feeling small or anxious or claustrophobic, I would just leave. I know that it probably made those around me confused, mad. But I usually needed the space. My withdrawl obviously caught his attention, because in a matter of moments, Tim was at my side. He asked me where I was going. I looked out against the water of the Tennessee River and saw the famous Chattanooga walking bridge, lighting up in the night.
"I was going to walk the bridge."
He looked at me tentatively. Knowingly. I continued my brisk walk, faced forward and away from him.
"You know that girls like that are a dime-a-dozen. You're different."
My heart froze, I hadn't realized that I was that miserably transparent. I wish I could just disappear.
No one really says those kind of things, except in movies.
I was flattered in the moment. I wanted to believe it, but deep in my heart I knew it was total bull shit.
I stayed for one reason.
When I was with Tim, I stopped over analyzing myself and breathed a sigh of strained relief because I finally felt understood. It wasn't the affection or that attention that I fed off of. It was the idea that at least he understood me and I didn't have to combat the whole world. After so many school days of rejection, I felt like, yeah! the weirdnesses that made up who I was, was also what made me prettier than those suave, suave girls…. because that understanding between us was the rarer beauty for two people to attain.
Unfortunately, the way our relationship went and the way he treated me, I learned that the hard way that it was only an illusion.
I'm not really complaining, because.. I suppose that most everyone feels this way.
I'm just hoping that if you are one of them, that this makes you feel a little better.... and understood haha : )
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