What's up, y'all?!
I have so many stories for you guys it's fucking nuts. It's not like my life is the coolest thing since sliced bread or anything, but it ain't half bad. And there's rarely a dull moment, especially now.
Rereading the posts I made almost two years ago, I can say that not much has changed in my personality since I was sixteen till now, at the ripe age of eighteen. However, I am at college which is super cool. Now, going along with the whole "anonymous" thing, I'm not gonna tell you which college I'm at. However, I will tell you that it's a big sport school - Division 1. Oh yeah.
But hold up, I'm gonna back up to senior year right quick. I'm gonna lay out this whole story for you. The story of how I lost all my friends without meaning to. It's been a couple years so I'm pretty good at distancing myself from the situation and realizing that maybe it was the best thing to happen. Because now, a year and a half later, I'm happier than I ever was with that group of friends. Except, I know that in my last post, I said that I was no longer friends with the girl I went to the beach with that summer I lost my virginity. That's not really true anymore because I spent all last week at that same beach house with her and our other friend for spring break. Haha, we came back together and built each other back up throughout senior year. And don't worry, I'm totally gonna write about last week.
For now, though, let's stick to senior year. If I'm being honest with myself, this all really started the summer before - the summer I lost my virginity. See, my whole life, I've been mostly friends with guys. The friends that I had outside my group of best friends were all boys. They were a year older, though, and left for college already and I didn't get to see them as much. I was feeling a lack of testosterone in my group of friends and needed my fix.
Luckily, I had an in. My friends and I are really into music, especially hardcore and pop punk. I'm more into pop punk, though, and most of my friends are into hardcore. Where we live, there's a huge local scene for teens that are into music the way that we were. At the time, one of my friends, we'll call her Lisa, was dating a guy, Tim, that played drums for one of the local bands we knew. He also went to our really small school. So, we ended up spending a lot of time with him and the other two guys in his band. Tim's other band members were guys named Brandon and Glen. Brandon played guitar and sang for their band while Glen played the bass. Now that I'm not really associated with them anymore, I have qualms in saying that they were a really shitty band.
One of Lisa's best friends is a girl named Abby. They had been really close since the eighth grade - I mean, four years. Abby is really nice and pretty and Brandon took a liking to her from the first ever bonfire I had at my house with all of us. They became a "thing" rather quickly considering she'd never had a boyfriend or even kissed a boy before. One of the many downfalls of going to a school as small as ours - you had to find your own man candy. Boo.
Anyway, now you had Brandon dating Abby and Lisa dating Tim. I ended up getting really close to Glen. We were very compatible in a friendly way, which was exactly what I needed - a no strings friendship with a guy. We were inseparable pretty much all summer.
We all kind of skated along for a while, happy with our new-found friendships and relationships. There were about three other girls besides me, Lisa, and Abby who completed our "group," including the one I went to the beach with. We all hung out a lot and did pretty much everything together.
Later, though, things started to go awry. Lisa got upset with Brandon - for what? I don't remember - which meant that Tim had to be mad at Brandon. Which Glen thought was stupid, so Glen was also mad at Brandon. The whole thing was 50 shades of stupid.
What happened next was what you'd expect - I defended Glen and Abby defended Brandon. Lisa had no right to be mad at Brandon, and I would stick to my choice of defending Glen until my dying day because I know it was the right decision. However, my two other best friends in that group, Lexie and Anna, took Lisa's side. They weren't big fans of Brandon either and decided that if Abby and I were hanging out with him, they weren't hanging out with us.
Now, being teenage girls, all this fighting was never vocalized between us as a group. It's all been very sly and it took me a while to realize what was really going on. By the time I did, though, it was too late. All my best friends, except Abby, were mad at me and they wouldn't hear me out.
At the end of the summer, right before school started, we had a senior retreat with our graduating class. All 80 or so of us jumped on a couple busses and headed to some camp ground to sleep in cabins and go hiking. My school was weird. It was really fun, though, gotta admit.
Anyway, since our fighting wasn't exactly spoken, my best friends and I shared a cabin with another clique. Anna and I even shared bunk beds. The trip was fun - especially because Tim, Brandon, and Glen were all just not there. We had girl time. We gossiped, we played pranks on the boys, we sang Bohemian Rhapsody in the shower. We had a good time. And maybe that's what we needed - a trip away from all the memories, relationships, and responsibilities we've built in our town.
Of course, the senior retreat couldn't last forever. Eventually, we returned home and had to continue going to class.
The Friday after we came back from the trip was Lisa's birthday and she was having us over for burgers. She told us this plan on the bus ride back from the trip. Abby and I let her know that we'd be there, but Brandon and Glen's new band was premiering that night and we had to be at that show by 8:30. This show was planned two months prior to her birthday dinner and Abby and I had to stick around for our respective boyfriend and best friend.
Lisa wasn't too happy about that, but just told us that burgers were going on the grill at 5, so be at her house by then. We agreed to meet everyone there.
Friday, we all met at Lisa's house - me, Abby, Anna, and Lexie. We ate burgers, had a water balloon fight, ate cake, and opened presents. By the time all that was over and done with, it was creeping up on eight o'clock and Anna, Lexie, and Lisa were talking about watching a movie. Since Abby and I knew how Lisa felt about Brandon, we didn't want to make a big show about leaving early to see him. So instead, we tactfully said that we couldn't stay for the movie but "Happy Birthday, Lisa!"
Abby and I left and made it to the show just before 8:30. However, just as we were walking in, Abby got a phone call from Lexie.
"Hey, what's up?" she answered.
"Where'd you and Isa go?" Lexie asked us.
"We had to go to the Blue Room. Brandon and Glen's band is playing their first show, remember?" We had all gotten the invitation on Facebook, after all. And we mentioned it before we agreed to attend Lisa's party.
"Well, that's kinda shitty, don't you think? To ditch your best friend for your boyfriend of, what, three months?" Lexie asked condescendingly. We could hear Lisa in the background say something that sounded like, "Yeah, real shitty!"
Abby and I were confused because it's not like some things take precedent or anything, but we had agreed to coming out and supporting our friends at the very beginning of the summer. I mean, this was really important to them and we were really important to them, so of course we would want to go to the show. Have you ever been put in a situation like that before? I'm sure you have. It's like you're damned if you do and damned if you don't because no matter which way you allow yourself to be pulled, you're gonna be a bad friend to someone. Those are hands down some of the worst situations you can find yourself in.
Which, of course, is exactly where I found myself. Because that's how life works.
Abby tried to explain it all away by saying, "We told Lisa when she invited us that we would have to go to this, too. We stayed for the important parts, anyway. We just missed the movie."
From there, it was pretty much all of the same shit - Lexie trying to vilify Abby and I for having friends outside of their circle and Abby trying to explain why it shouldn't be that big of a deal. Honestly, the whole thing kind of came out of nowhere. I mean, Abby and I weren't stupid - we knew that our friends weren't particularly big fans of Glen and Brandon, but we always kept them separated. We never forced them to hang out with us or invited them places we knew our other friends would be. We didn't even talk about them in front of our fiends. We tried our hardest to keep them separated. But what really separated them was the fact that our girl friends gave us an unspoken ultimatum - them or Brandon and Glen.
See, that's something that boys just never do. I've never had a guy friend so jealous of my girlfriends that he felt the need to distance me from them. That's just one of those crazy things that girls do. I've probably done it once or twice, not that I can remember them specifically, but I apologize to whoever I've done it to. Because in situations like the one I found myself in, there is only one possible choice - I chose my boys.
I had history with those girls. We had some great times and some better-than-great times. But we also had our heartbreaks. I've been dealing with a lot and for some reason, in that group of friends, I could never find solace. No one would hold my hand, listen to me cry, and say "It's gonna be okay." No, instead, the would act uncomfortable and shy away from any form of emotion. Also, I enjoy being pretty. I like to feel pretty, just like I'm sure every other girl does. But to them, that was the only thing that mattered after a while. We couldn't just watch a movie, we'd watch a movie while painting our nails and straightening our hair. We'd do at-home wax treatments and only go out to eat if they had something organic and we burned enough calories in our hot-yoga session to pleasure ourselves with veggie burgers and zucchini fries. After three years, I think I had had enough. We had history, but I didn't know if I wanted to have a future with them.
There's one hell of a lot more to this story, but I don't think I have the strength to write about it right now. I'll make a part two soon, promise.
