Third Wheel

It didn't happen right away. The process was more gradual. At first we seemed to be great friends. We went to classes together, ate lunch together, and talked about things we could do after school. It really began when one of the girls asked my opinion of one of the others. I hadn't gotten to know that person real well yet and not wanting to make any hasty judgements I simply said I didn't really have an opinion yet because I didn't know them to well yet. The next thing I knew she was turning around and telling the whole table that I hated her. I of course told them that was not what I said and told them what I actually said, but the damage had already been done.
Soon the three girls who had been my friends began to slowly exclude me from things. When I went to walk with them to classes I was ignored and eventually they began to walk in a way that I was forced to walk by myself. Then I found that they had someone sit in my seat in the classes so I couldn't sit next to them any more. Eventually one day when I was on my to lunch with them they gave me a glare as if saying your not coming are you?
When your a kid lunch table seating is decided on the first day of school. So when I was forced to look elsewhere to sit it wasn't easy. I had to find a table that not only had an empty seat, but would allow me to sit there. Many tables when they saw me coming would put their books down in the empty seat. Luckily I found a table that had a couple of empty seats and I would sit there for the remainder of the school year. If it hadn't been for that table I may have been eating in the bathroom.
I also found that making friends was difficult. The girls had made it their job to make sure no one would take the time to get to know me. I had become that girl that know one wants to go nowhere near. All this over a simple misunderstanding.

New Friends, New School.

I started middle school with a positive attitude. I saw seventh grade as an opportunity to make new friends in a new school. I was hoping that my pattern from elementary school wouldn't follow. Every other year I would have plenty of friends. I had a tendency to make friends with people who moved or ended up going to a different school. Of course some friends I just lost touch with. So middle school seemed like a great opportunity to drop the past and perhaps reinvent myself. I had decided to force myself to be a little more outgoing and sociable.
I've always been on the quite side and found it hard to just jump in and start a conversation. So I figured I didn't have to be the quite girl know one really knew anymore. I could be sociable to. Thinking back being shy and staying that way for another grade would have been wise.
Anyway I met my soon to be "friends" outside the school through someone I had been friends with in elementary school. She and I didn't share any classes but she she knew someone who did. Her name was Natalie (name has been changed) and we decided to go to class together. Our first class was math.
It was in that class that we met up with Natalie's friends Aubrey (changed) and Ember (changed). We discovered we shared all the same classes and the same lunch period.
I figured I had just started the path to three great friendships. In my view we were friends. We walked to classes together. Ate lunch together and talked and gossiped with each other. I was the new one in the group and still a little reserved, but talking was awkward for me. I was still learning to socialize. While it comes with ease to many, for an introvert socializing is not a natural thing. Maybe it was because of this that things would eventually take a darker turn.

Buried Pain

So recently I have been going to train to be a advocate at the YWCA. While what I went through in seventh grade is nothing compared to what the people I will be dealing with have gone through I couldn't help but notice something when going over some material. We were going over the phases of Trauma and I realized I had been through each phase. It bothered me slightly that I had never realized the impact that the bullying I had experienced in my life had actually had.
While in my other blog Dizzy eyes you see a lot of the consequences of what will be discussed here in this blog I never make clear on why I am that way. When I began that blog I had no intentions of every reliving this part of my past. This is a part of my past I don't like thinking about. I guess I don't think about it because I'm almost afraid to. I'm afraid that just by thinking about it I might just land myself back in that dark place and when I do think about it I fear what might have happened if things had gone just a little bit differently.
Their will be parts of my experience I will be leaving out for my privacy, but I will be sharing a lot. I think it's important to share for a few reasons. One to help me deal with the events in my past that I've refused to acknowledge for years now and perhaps in doing this I can finally forgive the people who wronged me. Two to let other kids out there know that if they themselves are a bully victim that they aren't the only one and things will get better. Three to point out to the bullies just how damaging and unfunny their cruel words really are.