A Lifetime of Friends

"Sometimes your closest friend is your greatest enemy."

- Jason Fong

I sigh with the memories brought before my eyes. Friendships, lovers, and feelings of all sorts plague my reminisces. My hand stalls in my writing, my mind exploring the depths of my pain. I ask myself, what shall I write? What pain will I put down? Will I write of loves lost? Feelings of joy and happiness or the many years of my childhood?

A memory, in this dark room I sit, comes to me. One memory that torments my past; my high school days. Those days where I felt most alive and on top of the world. Where I felt the most pain, joy, and heart ache than in my entire life. While love seemed like the most important thing those days, I somehow knew it was those I kept around me; my friends. Those I spent the most time with, told the most stories to, and shared everything with.

I had no brothers and no younger sister to tell my secrets to. I only had my mother, who I loved and shared my concerns with, along with my father, who I did my best to keep happy. My sister, who was half a decade older than I, was as distant to me as the stars are to the core of the Earth. We are opposites, her and I. I salt, her pepper. I white, her black. There was nothing we shared, together or apart. Was I to attempt to bond with her, she would push me away even more. Was I, young and just becoming a woman, to tell her my inner most thoughts? No, I refused. She treated me horribly, so I kept my distance.

So then who was left for me to be close to? Boys? No. They were too young in mind and too old in body to understand a young woman’s mind. So then, who? The answer was always there, staring me in the face. Friends. My parents always warned me against getting hurt by the opposite sex, so my only solution? Girls my own age, who understood where I was coming from and acted much the same as I.

Ever since I was a young girl, I had a best friend. The one friend who I held more dear than my other friends and spent the most time with, while sharing the most things with. It wasn’t hard for me to find a friend. There were always girls my own age to play with, whether just one day or three times a week. I do not remember my first few friends, although I remember having some in my early childhood.

My best friend in Elementary school was a girl named Jessica. I met her while in the second grade, having moved from another city. She was always the one being teased by the older kids, always seeming to be off alone. So I, drawn to her for being an outcast, befriended her. It was an odd sort of friendship. I enjoyed playing with her on the playground and having little girl sleepovers, but there was something about Jessica that wasn’t quite right. Even at such a young age, she seemed to know how to manipulate and hurt people. I had many friends those three years, but Jessica hurt me the most. She would pick fights with me all the time, resulting in my being upset. My parents remember Jessica well, for I was always going to them for comfort.

After Jessica, Lorraine was my best friend. After a few years, Lorrie became my best friend over Jessica. She was like me in so many ways. We were both the same age, same hair color, even liked the same boys. We spent every weekend at each other’s houses and once we entered middle school, spent hours on the phone together. By the seventh grade, I seemed to have three best friends, all at once. Mickie, Sarah, and Lorrie. Lorrie moved to another city, but we still spoke often. Mickie and I spent our days at school together, just talking at lunches and during class. Sarah, however, soon became my best friend above all others. Her and I were friends for four years, ending badly. But this isn’t the memory I want to tell.

The memory I am writing to you now involves the so-called popular girls and their queen bee, Lisa. Lisa and I had known each other in elementary school, but in middle school I wanted more than my average-popularity persona. So I proposed a proposition to Lisa. I asked her to be my friend and let me be one of her little group of friends so that I may achieve the popularity I so desired. She agreed, seeming sincere.

It only took a few weeks for my other friends to notice my change. I stopped spending time with my old friends to be with the popular girls, which angered them to a certain extent. They ceased all contact with me, which (in my eyes) only helped my transition into a new clique. I woke up early for school, just to go over to Lisa’s house and put on make-up, despite my mother’s wishes that I didn’t wear it. In a way, I suppose you could say I was using Lisa. I wanted to be popular, and she was my gateway into that world. A world that insured parties and boyfriends in the upcoming high school years.

It only took one day. I felt I knew Lisa, bonded with her, but most of the time friendships are false. I confided in her, told her a secret from my past. It wasn’t anything big or disgusting, although rather embarrassing for myself. A young girl of thirteen doesn’t like to admit certain parts of her life and when she confides in a friend, she expects that secret to be kept.

To Lisa, secrets were meant to be exaggerated and then spread throughout the school.

Lisa was, as I said, the queen bee so to speak. She had influence on everybody at our little middle school. She exaggerated an embarrassing kiss with a friend and made a horrible rumor about me. Soon everyone was teasing and poking fun at me for something I didn’t do. More and more rumors branched from the one Lisa spread and soon enough everyone had a different idea of me. I was a lesbian, a girl who slept around - despite the fact I had never so much as French-kissed a boy, and did disgusting things to girls who spent the night.

Naturally, the rumors were exaggerated, even beyond the initial perversion of it all, and soon I was out-casted yet again. So what was I to do? Being betrayed by my so-called close friend, who promised me to keep a tiny embarrassing secret, had left me hurt and alone. I was forced to make friends with the other “weird-o’s”. The girls and boys who sat at the back of cafeteria and talked about books they’ve read and what fan fiction they were writing next on it. I didn’t mind befriending these kids, in fact they turned out to be the most loyal friends I’d ever made, but the social damage Lisa and her friends left was enough to drive me away. My transition into high school would have been devastating. To begin my young-woman days as an outcast who never had a boyfriend and couldn’t trust anyone she was friends with scared me to no end.

I ended up moving. I went miles away to the next town and moved in with my father. He gladly took me in, having been newly married. I started school with a clean slate, no one I knew the past few years were there. My new school opened up opportunities I didn’t think I had. I never got over what Lisa did. It still haunts me to this day. People who have friends at my old school ask me about a rumor they heard or used to believe. I do my best to ensure them I am none of those things and did none of those things.

I leave you now, my dear reader, with this:

Keep your heart guarded, from lovers or friends. Either one can damage you, hurt you, and destroy you. I don’t want you to believe me a paranoid oddity. I do not think one should become a hermit and avoid social situations because of the risk of being hurt. Instead, get to know a person before you invest your time and love. Caring for a person takes a lot of time and feeling. It has risks, so know what you are gambling and what odds you have before taking that chance.