That One Girl

One of the hardest things I’ve had to come to terms with in my life is that I’m the friend that’s often overlooked. I have been my whole life, I should be used to it but thanks to social media and watching people I know interacting online and in person always leaves me feeling a little saddened that I don’t have those fierce lady friendships, or the girls weekends, I’m not the person anyone calls with great news that needs to be shared nor the one that gets invited to weddings or showers, camping trips or things that groups of ladies do together.

I was the girl at school who didn’t talk, didn’t reach out for friendships nor did I involve myself in groups where I could make friends. I wanted to, I wanted friends, I wanted to have a bestie and be that person that was always included because not being included hurt tremendously. I guess it was hard for me to reach out because I just didn’t stay in one place long, not long enough to make any real friendships anyway. I think we moved roughly every 3 years so just when I’d get a friend we’d move away and I never saw them again.

(Before I go much further, I know a few of my close friends read my blog I’d like to point out that I have a small handful of friends who I hold very close to my heart. Friends who have been there no matter what was going on in my life and friends I would never give up on and who also would never give up on me and I cherish them immensely.)

By the time I got to high school I had been to 6 different schools in 4 different towns and even one in another state, I didn’t have many friendships but just a few and oddly those few are still in my life.

I’d love to sit and blame everyone else for being sad about not having those fierce lady friendships but in all reality I am the reason I am such a lonely loner. Blessed with a complex and contradictory personality that I’m now getting to know I look back on my life and wonder if it’d been different had I known as a child about my personality. Or did my childhood create my personality? I was extremely shy, and quite often off by myself playing with my cats or my horses. I had terrible anxiety as a child when I was left with sitters, often crying inconsolably until my mom came home.

Today at 46 years old I use the words reserved, cautious and intuitive to describe myself and the reasons why I have very few friends and I look back on my life and see that I was protecting myself from the ones who would eventually hurt me in some way. A few years ago I reconnected with someone from high school and we spent every weekend together for over a year, I was glad to reconnect because she helped me see the way other people saw me and tried to help me get more friends. She told me how to dress, how I should do my hair, told me I should wear makeup and that I just needed to be more talkative. Fake it ‘til you make it is her motto. I should have embraced it but I just didn’t agree that faking anything would create a positive outcome for me because all I ever wanted was for others to be their true selves around me. She helped me see that I was much happier being with my small handful of girls than to try to be fake to get more.

As the world is today, finding anyone who is genuine is quite difficult! It seems it’s easier to be something we aren’t than to spend time with ourselves figuring out who we are. It’s much easier to point out other’s flaws than to dissect our own and truly get to know who we are.

I have found the friends I am closest with know who they are and are not fake in any way, shape or form, they also know who I am and accept me as such, they actually embrace me. Once in a while I’ll meet someone new and they understand me and the way I think and they see something in me that others either can’t or won’t. I’ve found in my life I must be a mirror that makes others see themselves and most do not like what they see.

I’m slowly accepting this about myself and slowly working on my own mishaps that cause me to be unavailable. I’m slowly realizing the world is more damaged than we could ever imagine and until each of us sit with our own damage we aren’t going to heal.

I’ll stick with the handful of girls I call friends and I’ll continue to share my healing with those who appreciate it and I’ll continue to be as authentic as I can in order to show others it’s okay to be yourself. Especially around me.

I feel like there would be a lot less “mental illness” in the world if we allowed everyone to just be themselves instead of telling them to be something else. I feel like we would be more apt to encourage others to be themselves if we truly knew who we were ourselves but until each of us sit with our hurt along side our happiness we will continue being a society of damaged people projecting our fears and traumas on others.

Rock on my pretties!

I’d like to thank C, T and L for being my forever girls.

If you have any ideas that you would like me to write about please let me know!