This Is Actually Extremely Similar To What I Experienced.

This is actually extremely similar to what I experienced.

(vent hidden under cut for those that do want to read it.)

I had one person I stuck close to for half or maybe even a majority of elementary school, and she had other friends she liked just as much. A part of me could tell they didn't like me at all, and I never understood why. Anytime I approached them during recess, they'd drag her away to talk about something else, when all I wanted to do was to just hang out with my best friend.

I don't remember how, but I learned they thought I was 'annoying'. At some point in 4th or 5th grade, I stopped trying. I stopped trying to get along with them, and I just let them take her, even though I really didn't want to. Depression hit me pretty hard then, because she was my favorite person at the time. And it just hurt. We were only 9 or 10.

It's been over 8 years since then. I still think abiut that. I fear that people will eventually see me as 'annoying', or that they'll let others drag me away from them. It fucked me up a lot.

People underestimate how much it fucks you up to be subtly excluded as a kid. I would try to talk to my classmates and be met with disinterest or annoyance. The one friend I had, who I clung to and nodded along to his every word, had other friends he liked just as much or more. And his other friends didn’t care for me at all.

I look back at pictures from the time and see how separated I was from them. I remember knowing I was different. I remember posing questions about the world to the girls playing next to me and realizing that they had never asked the same ones to themselves. That the ways we thought couldn’t be more different.

I kept myself amused with my own fanatical stories and musings in my head. I would wander the playground on a circular path, imagining a friend and being sorely disappointed when it didn’t feel as real as I’d hoped.

There was a bubble separating me from everyone else, thin, and nearly invisible, but with a pearly sheen you could catch under the right conditions. I knew it was there, they knew it was there, and it changed me