Okay, so, I've never been the most athletic person. In elementary school given the choice between making friendship bracelets or playing dodge-ball... Hell ya, I chose dodge-ball. I even made up a new way to play it and got it named after me. But like, track and field and gym class were a hot nope for me. Partially due to my being bigger than all the other girls in my class, which I never even had a problem with personally. It was them who had a problem with me, and made sure that I knew it. I didn't feel self conscious about my body until a boy I had never spoken to decided to start calling me, "Fat Zone". He wrote it on my desk, handed it to me on paper, said it every time he saw me. And it hurt my eight year old heart. It wasn't always difficult to evade the torment, and I in turn, occupied my time with making my friends laugh. I specifically remember that being my biggest goal, to make people laugh. I would do whatever it took, from pretending to puke to falling out of chairs. If I could make other people feel good, I didn't need anything else. But elementary school ended, and I moved. I didn't know a single person at my middle school, and that hit me hard. I went from class clown, to class introvert. I didn't speak unless I was spoken to, and my nose was constantly wedged in between the pages of books. In English, we'd take those little class trips to the library, and I would walk out with a stack of seven or eight books, so everyone thought I was the class genius. While I was a straight A student, I was no longer used to getting attention. And so, my fantastic anxiety was born.
It's no secret that middle school is a terrible time, but for someone with not a single friend, it was much worse. Each day fell into the same routine, and to some extent it was entirely miserable. Wake up, go to school, come home and do my homework, then read until I fell asleep. On top of that, social media wasn't really that huge a thing in my life or those around me yet, so I had no contact to even the people that were my acquaintances, to try and ease into friendship. Up until middle school, I tried to be friends with everyone. If we met, we were friends, unless you were a bully. But that concept didn't really exist in middle school. I was alone. And by eighth grade, I was suicidal. And even now, seven years later, loneliness is a big problem for me, I don't handle it well. Of course there were other things in my life that led me down that terrible path, but we'll save that for later. But, by the end of eighth grade, I did manage to score a friend group, a friend group that didn't even last a semester in high school, but a friend group nonetheless. There were six of us, we'll call them Sarah, Cindy, Sage, Kenzie, and Kendall. This was a very dysfunctional group. Pretty much, we were all friends with Sarah, and tolerated each other. That's pretty much how it went, so it wasn't a group that I actually wanted to be in, but I thought it was better than nothing. I stopped eating enough and spent my lunch periods in the library by myself, I stopped talking. Part of me knew that I was crying out for help, so when my friends finally heard, I was happy. I wasn't seeking attention, I was seeking comfort. And they saw that, and even though I'm not friends with any of them anymore, I'm eternally grateful for that. I guess I'm saying that we all have problems, and it may appear like we don't want help or comfort, but deep down we usually do. So, if you see someone that is hurting, it's okay to reach out. In fact, I encourage it. But I also, of course say, exercise caution. Some people don't have the best reaction to people trying to get them to open up. But it doesn't hurt to at least try. You could save someone. It doesn't matter if they're 13 or 30. You can make a difference in others live, whether you make them smile or make them cry. It's not always clear what we need, but it is clear that we need to seek it out. You never know what might happen.
Seek thee out,
Your Gracious Author
