Happy 14th Birthday to me … NOT.

I've yet to have many difficult moments or experiences of rejection that have affected me too harshly. I do not really let situations like that put me down, but one experience I had last year really affected me. This time in my life mainly hurt me because my eighth grade graduation was approaching, and I had never been through a situation similar to this one.

Last year, around the beginning of March, my long time friends started acting strangely towards me and distanced themselves. I had known them for nine years, but I guess I didn’t know them as well as I thought I did. This was also the month of my birthday. Initially, I didn’t think much of it; maybe I was just taking things the wrong way. Then, I began to feel really awkward around them, so I started to distance myself as well. I also started hanging out with three girls in my class I wasn't very close with, and all the guys in my class. The guys were on my side because I hung out with them more than the other girls did,and they were my twin brother’s friends. These back-stabbing, girls in my class started to also distance themselves from the three people I befriended.

My birthday finally came around and my so called "friends" were still acting strangely towards me, but I desperately wanted to renew our friendships before our graduation. I decided to have a sleepover with all the girls in my class, hoping that some bonding could fix all of our problems.Everyone showed up to my sleepover, and I started to believe that just maybe, they wanted to fix this situation as desperately as I wanted to. It turns out the only reason they showed up was because the amusement park they were planning on going to was closed. I couldn’t believe the girls I had called my friends for nine years had planned to not show up to my own birthday sleepover because they had, “better plans”. Regardless of their rude intentions, I maintained my hopeful attitude. I thought maybe it was fate that the amusement park was closed, and that we could still restore our friendship.
It turned out I could not have judged that situation any worse. For the exception of my three new friends, all the girls at my sleepover ignored me, as if I were a soulless manikin at a clothing store.  My new friends and I tried to come up with activities that could bring all of us together, but the other girls just shot down every idea we presented to them. By then I became so frustrated that I decided to stop trying. My real friends and I just decided to do things by ourselves. We knew we didn’t need them to have fun.

After a while I felt bad that I was being unsocial, because that would make me just as much to blame as them. My friends and I approached the other girls and attempted to try once more, to salvage our relationships. I remember clearly saying to the girls, “We are all friends here, why can’t we just do something together”. They looked at me as if I were speaking a different language, and they continued playing basketball without inviting my three friends and I to join.  The rest of the night was more of the same. More The next week one of the girls had a birthday party and invited the whole class except my three friends and me.

The next week at school, the back-stabbing, ignorant girls that treated me like  garbage, continued pretending like nothing happened. My friends and I found out they had been saying mean things behind our backs. We never said anything about them because the last thing we wanted was to get blamed for the whole situation. One of our teachers found out about the situation and he gave our class an extremely long lecture, which seemed like the length of a movie. Luckily my brother, who was present at the disastrous sleepover, told him everything that happened. Our teacher was on our side.

A couple of weeks passed. I still hung out with my new best friends and the guys by the basketball courts, while the other girls sat around in a circle at the bottom of the hill on the other side of the yard. One of the girls surprisingly apologized, but we weren’t sure if she was sincere or not. It was close to graduation and sadly,  my plan failed. We were still not getting along. I had to give the salutatorian speech and I did not really know what to say about my whole class, so I forcefully lied and said our class was a family. That was obviously untrue, but I had to end my speech on a good note. I realized these problems didn’t really matter, because after graduation they would be out of my life. 

After graduation, I finally figured out why my best friends turned against me. My former best friend texted me to apologize and attempted to justify her and the other girls’ behavior. She said that I made them feel bad because “I thought I was better than them”.I am very hard on myself and I definitely don’t think I am better than anyone.  The girl that was “apologizing” also claimed that it was I was the one who left them rather than the other way around. She said I “ignored them and my awkward presence around them made everyone feel down”.She basically blamed the situation on me, but I just let it go and “accepted her apology”. She was the only one who at least attempted to apologize, so we’re friends again. As for the other girls,  I’ve seen some around, hugged them, and just acted excited to see them. I pretended nothing happened. I do not really hold a grudge towards anyone anymore; we all have an amicable relationship and I forgave them all (even though they didn’t apologize).

I have learned a lot from this experience because this has never happened to me before. I have never been bullied; I was nice to everyone and tried to be friends with everybody in my class. If someone did say something bad about me, I would never let it bring me down, but this was different. I found out who my real friends were and I have more things in common with them than I did with my other friends. I made friendships that could last forever. I have learned to be much more careful in choosing my friends. If something like this were to ever happen again, I would know exactly how to handle it. I would never again let a similar situation bring me down.