It's not you, it's me
A random message from someone I knew in high school triggered some things
I had no idea what I was going to write about this week. I started writing about customer service again, but this time from the side of really bad experiences to contrast with Disney’s toxic positivity. After a few paragraphs, though, I stopped writing. There was no value in whining about terrible customer service and the piece felt like I was standing on a soapbox, screaming at everyone for becoming so accepting and complacent. In short, it was shit.
But then I opened Facebook. A friend request came in late Friday night. It was someone I knew in high school in Toronto, one of those girls who I thought was a friend. She had also sent a note through messenger, telling me she found me through her book club. I am the featured and guest author at their online event this week.
After ensuring it was really her and not a clone, I accepted the request and the message. Of course I creeped her profile. She was still friends with a handful of the cliquey girls from high school. Of course I scrolled their profiles too,
And then this weird thing happened. As I looked at the lines and filled-out faces of the girls who used to be rail thin with perfect skin, instead of feeling vindicated, I felt a sense of camaraderie come over me. I had a single thought:
Time catches up to all of us.
That these women have been friends more than four decades is astounding. I will admit, I am a little very jealous of that kind of longevity. They’ve stuck together through a father committing suicide (that happened when we were in high school), the unrelenting gossip around one of them marrying the guy we thought she hated (the rumour was that he raped her and she was pregnant; he didn’t and she wasn’t, and they are still married); the divorces, the new loves, the second and third divorces. From their photos, I saw they all attended the b’nei mitzvot (the Jewish coming of age ceremony that happens when a child turns 13) of each other’s kids, they rented a lake cottage together every summer, and still make a very big deal about every birthday.
I grieved for a moment, because I don’t have a friendship like that, and then I smiled. I was glad they had each other, that they had stable support.
I think I had them wrong in high school. Everyone was figuring out who they were and where they fit in. We all had our drama, our hurt, and our lack of confidence. And it pains me to admit this, but I had as much of a hand in alienating myself as they did. I had every opportunity to be and stay friends with them. I was invited to parties I didn’t go to. I sat in on conversations that I didn’t contribute to. And I know exactly why.
I didn’t believe I was enough.
By the time I started high school, I was convinced I was too fat, too poor, and too different from any of them to truly belong. The track on replay - you’d have more friends if you were thinner, bills have to be paid before you can have money for fries, they’re only using you and aren’t really friends - was a playlist my mother planted in my head. I bought that bullshit and let it get in the way.
But, holy fuck. If I had stepped into myself then like I do now, I’m convinced we’d still be friends. I’d be figuring out how to fly in for birthdays, b’nei mitzvot, and a week on the lake, not creeping their lives on social media. This was the wake-up call I needed to once again acknowledge my pain and keep mending it. This is an opportunity for me to continue growing.
The girl woman who reached out wrote some beautiful words. She asked me about my kids and filled me in on hers. She lol’d when, in response to her telling me she plays pickle ball, I wrote that I watch my friends play pickle ball. She congratulated me on becoming a published author and then told me she ordered all of my books. I’m sure she’s curious to read them, but a part of me thinks that remembers she was my friend once and that’s what friends do.
What I’m reading
If this book had not been recommended to me twice, I would have ignored it. I wasn’t particularly interested in revisiting Canadian history, but this book hooked me in the introduction: “This is not the PG-13 version of Canada’s past taught in schools.”
No, it most certainly is not. It’s riveting, informative, and sometimes brutal, and I’m only on the third chapter. Using the maps of the past is a unique approach to charting history. It’s a bit heavy at times, both in the details and the savagery of mapping this land.
This is a very honest post. I loved it. Your smile lights up a room. That 16 year old girl had no idea how wonderful her life would be.