Anonymous 3
I have been thinking about this for nearly two years now. I have been thinking about my old friends and the good times we had together, I have been thinking about what I could have done to prevent those friends who I had good times with from becoming who they are today. I have been trying to figure out if it is my fault that they are who they are now, if I am the reason that they do what they do, if I am the reason why we are no longer the friends that we used to be. Every time I sign on Facebook, every time I see one of them, every time I hear their names, I am faced with these questions.
It all started in grade 5. I am a VERY shy and socially awkward person and being relatively new to the school didn’t help with the fact that I really had no friends. There were a few of those people who I would hang out with from time to time and eat lunch with but I didn’t have any real friends. One fateful afternoon, Mrs. S thought it was a great idea to partner me with somebody who I had never talked to before, knowing that I was a very shy person. Little did I know that this person, let’s call him Dairy, would become my best friend for the next four years.
At first we were just science partners but our friendship grew greater each and every day we were forced to partner up together. By the end of the school year I and Dairy were best friends and we hung out every day at school and lots of days after school. Summer eventually came and we never saw much of each other. I had gone on vacation for the first half of summer and he went during the second half so there was really no time to hang out until the next year of school started, our first year of middle school.
As I entered my classroom for grade6, I was deeply saddened by the fact that Dairy and I were not in the same class. Days had past and I barely saw Dairy at school and wondered if he still wanted to be my friend or if he found new ones. Months went by and I was sure that Dairy had moved on and no longer wanted me to be anything other than that kid you say hi to every time you pass them in the hallway. For the last few months of school I had found a new friend, Smurf, who was cool but our friendship had never been as great as that of Dairy and I.
A whole year had passed without me hanging out with Dairy and we were now in grade 7. I was in the same class as Smurf again but Dairy was nowhere to be seen. I had hoped all summer that we would be in the same classroom so that maybe our friendship could be like it was before. This year was almost the same as last year but part way through Smurf disappeared (to this day I still do not know what happened to him) and I spent all my lunch hours hanging out with people I didn’t really see as friends, mostly because they had Gameboy Advances and would let me play Pokémon Ruby with them. On the day before grade 7 ended I was handed a sheet that I could put a name on and that one person would have a high chance of being in the same class as me next year. I quickly scribbled down Dairy’s name and prayed with all my heart that we would be matched in the same class next year.
All summer I kept thinking of all the fun times that Dairy and I had. I was totally excited when Dairy invited me to his birthday party that summer but we never saw each other anymore that summer. I had never had a friendship as great as that before and didn’t think I could make it through another year of school without a great friend by my side. I can remember one particular night during the summer really well – the night before Dairy and I would enter grade 8. I remember this night so well because it was the first night that I had ever stayed up all night. I was so worried that I would have to go through another school year alone that I felt sick and even cried through some of the night.
The day had finally arrived and I was all packed up and ready to read who’s class I was in that year. I walked up to the list, found my teacher and quietly walked into the classroom and sat down in the seat closest to the door. Why the seat closest to the door you may ask. I picked that particular seat so that when Dairy entered the classroom, which I was sure he would, he would see me immediately and sit beside me. 7painful minutes later, the bell rang and the first day of classes started. I didn’t pay attention to the teacher at all that class because I was too busy thinking about the long year I had ahead of me because I was too shy to walk up to Dairy and his new friends and ask if I could hang out with them. The bell signifying that class was over rang and I quietly walked to my bus and went home and slept.
When I got to school the next day I spotted Dairy standing at the entrance to the school and as I got closer he approached me. He came to tell me that my class had been split and I had the chance to choose what class I was moved to and he wanted me to choose his class. I was so excited that I ran as fast as I could to my old class, grabbed my desk and carried it all the way across the school and into his classroom and placed it down beside his. This was the happiest I had been in almost two years and almost happier than I have ever been before. Me and Dairy hung out together every day after that and soon enough, a foreign student who just moved into our town who would become the third person in our group for the next two years had arrived.
I can clearly remember the day that my second best friend had first entered our classroom. The friend, we will just call him Sizzle, was from England, he was black and he was from a rich family so he stuck out like a sore thumb in a school of all white students. After anew days of him sitting by himself, me and Dairy decided we would like to become friends with him and we stuck to it for what seemed like an eternity.
Grade 9 and half of grade 10 (our first two years of High school) past and our friendship was at its best. We hung out every day, we hung out every weekend, and we hung out all the time. One day on the way to our hangout spot at lunch I spotted Sizzle walking toward me with a group of 8 girls who were apparently friends of his. I was not too happy when I was told that they would be hanging out with us that lunch hour, mostly because I was so shy, self-conscious and socially awkward, but decided that I would take it for the team. The next day was the same story; they were just hanging out with us this lunch hour and nothing more. Slowly but surely, over the course of half a year, I had essentially been replaced. I was alone. I had been abandoned by the only two people who I had ever trusted and had a serious friendship with. Grade 11 and12 past and we were reunited once in a while and spent a weekend or so together and I even sat beside Dairy in Law 12 for 5 months but we never went back to how we were. I spent the last two years of high school in the library reading, hoping that the books would take me away and I wouldn’t have to deal with highschool anymore. I was devastated.
We were a trio. We were a squad. We were a group 3 who never abandoned each other and I thought that it would last forever. I honestly have no words to describe how I felt through grade 11 and 12. I had some other normal friends but I just never fit into any of their groups of friends. I was so alone that I skipped Prom, Grad and every school dance that was supposed to be the highlight of my whole 12 years spent at school.
We finally get to the main part of the story.
When Dairy, Sizzle and I were hanging out we never did anything wrong. We might have pulled a prank now and then but we were like perfect children. As I was getting pushed away and even more around the end of grade 12 I felt like they were doing things that they shouldn’t be doing. They were going to parties and drinking, they were having SEXIN HIGHSCHOOL and they were doing things that I could never do.
We went from being such great friends to just acquaintances in the span of two years. The brick wall that was our friendship had been reduced to rubble.
I always think to myself, would still be the friends we were before if I weren’t so shy? Maybe I should have abandoned my family and all my morals and followed the path that they had. Maybe if I had just had the courage to be around people that I didn’t know on a daily basis they would still be my friends and they wouldn’t be doing the things that they are now. Sizzle, like me, comes from a family of Christians. He has changed so much in two years that he is just like any other drinking, swearing teenager out there. The respectful friends I once knew were nothing more than common teenagers.
I am a Christian, I have morals that are very different than most people my age and I still have the respect I was taught to have when I was a little child. Maybe I am just being too harsh and unrealistic in my dreams that my friends would still be like me, my dreams that would be able to stop my friends from being pulled in by all the things of this world.
That is my story. I now have tons of friendships, but none of them as good as I once had. Many of the friendships I have now are people from across the country that I met on Twitter and they awesome of the best friends I have ever had. Would I go back and change how my friendships ended up? No. It was meant to be this way and I have new friends that I don’t want to lose. I still wish that things turned out differently but not at the expense of losing what I have now. It just wasn’t meant to be.
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