Schoolyard politics

So I have this friend. For hypothetical purposes, let's call her CJ. Now, I met CJ in grade seven, my first time in high school. She and her best friend (let's call her Anna) were super nice to me, which was great, seeing as I was the most painfully shy, awkward looking thing ever. Insert photo of said awkward phase;-

Errgh. Anyway, I became fast friends with them, Anna more so than CJ - CJ was pretty fucking weird to me, not gonna lie. But we all had loads of fun, all the way through year seven and eight. We were absolute best friends, tight as hell, and I think it made quite a few people in our little friendship group quite jealous, as many of them had been friends with CJ and Anna long before I rocked up (I attended a K-12 school). We did absolutely everything together, and we had our own codenames and secret jokes and stuff like that. I learned to love CJ's weirdness, and we became really close. But in year nine Anna just... stopped hanging out with us. It hit CJ really hard - they'd been best friends since kindy. I was a little pissed off, but...

Around the same time I met CJ and Anna, or a little before that actually, I became friends with a girl called Mimi. She was - and to this day, still is - the weirdest fucking person I'd ever met in my life. She was absolutely obsessed with anime, had wild crazy mood swings, was temperamental like no one I'd ever known, and was probably the most messed up person emotionally I'd ever met. That first year was the most difficult when it came to being her friend - she was pretty much an emotional wreck. But, I stood by her through it all and helped her through it, and she's a helluva lot better now, and I am super grateful that I was there for her during a bad time in her life.

Long story short, CJ and Mimi became close (CJ didn't really like Mimi before year eight). They bonded over a joint love of videogames and anime, which branched out into K-pop and all things Asian. I definitely don't have anything against Asian culture, but K-pop is not for me - and it really isn't for lack of trying. I felt myself being edged out of the group because of our profound differences in personal taste, and suddenly I understood why Anna stopped hanging out with us. Me and CJ bonded to the point where she was just, I don't know, pushed out of our little group. She dealt with it by making other friends, by spending time with other people and letting it go. But when I felt her and Mimi doing the same thing to me I couldn't handle it. I told them how it made me feel in year nine, and I think it really surprised them. Mimi was completely fabulous about it - she used my little confession as a way to bond more. She basically rocked up a couple days later, and demanded I write a list of things that interested me so she could go watch/read/do them so we'd have more to talk about. She went out and did those things - no one has ever made such an effort like that for me before. To this day, I am eternally grateful that she's my best friend.

CJ... didn't take it well. I was expecting Mimi to fly off the handle at me and declare we'd never be friends again. I was expecting CJ to quietly accept my feelings and take it into consideration. Obviously I didn't know them half as well as I thought, because I got the opposite, sort of. CJ was quiet and Mimi was loud, but the reverse expectations ended up being true. The day I confessed CJ had a tendency to push the outsider out of the group she contacted me via text that afternoon and told me she didn't want to be friends anymore. I contacted Mimi to find out what the hell was going on, and she confirmed CJ's intentions by screenshotting a picture of the text conversation they were having together. How fucking juvenile. I was so mad. Unbelievably mad. It lasted for a couple of days which I spend letting CJ KNOW just how fucking angry she made me by use of a choice few death glares aimed directly at her. Mimi was a bit of a wreck. She wasn't really able to face the fact that her first solid friendship group was falling apart in front of her. CJ started ignoring her too because of her association with me, and that pissed me off more than what she was doing to me. Eventually, she came crawling back to me, and, being the doormat I was, I let her back. But it damaged our relationship irreparably.

We've been friends since. However, the dynamic has changed a fair bit. CJ has this way of being completely domineering over her friend's life - she'll choose someone, and attach herself to them like a leech, and in doing so, sort of prevent them from spending any time with anyone else. She'd be incredibly jealous of everyone who talked to me, and just generally monopolised all my time. I always had to be emotionally available for her, but unfortunately I don't think the same privileges were given to me by her. Anyway, that sort of continued until around year 11, when school became a lot more serious. Mimi and I are academics; we go to school because we see it as a place to learn, to gain skills for the workforce in future. CJ sees it as a place to socialise. Now, I'm certainly not saying that if you don't do well in school you are inferior - I'd never ever think that of a person, because if you are trying then you are winning. But CJ is the kind of person to go to school and do nothing because she thinks classwork is beneath her. Me and Mimi never really saw eye to eye with her on the subject of school, but we let it go because when we were younger it wasn't all that important. But when it hit year eleven, schoolwork was the most important thing in all our lives - we went to school to learn now. CJ figured out that her wasting time in previous years had cost her dearly, and she was a little bitter over our academic successes, having both given a fuck when it wasn't too late to. She became sort of hostile every time we mentioned our classes (which we shared a lot of, so that added to our bonding), and frequently implied that we were teachers' pets and suck-ups. We both found it pretty offensive.

Adding to it was the maturation of Mimi. All the time I knew her, she was a gung-ho tomboy, hellbent on videogaming and watching anime and reading manga and always promised me I'd never see her wear makeup or do her hair or wear dresses and we'd never go out shopping because she hated it. Boy, she was wrong. I noticed it in year eleven, but it probably started a lot earlier. Slowly she'd gotten a little girlier, going out and buying make-up, changing her style gradually until - before I even fully realised it - I had a complete style icon on my hands. I honestly don't know how I didn't notice it sooner. And soon enough, we had more than just class work in common. We could go out and do stuff together, and it was suddenly so much easier to relate with one another now we had grown up a little. But CJ was still kinda stuck in the past a bit, and I guess she got threatened by it all.

She started being really quite passive aggressive with Mimi, and often took to ignoring her, which made us all a bit mad, to be honest. During year 12 their friendship just fell apart. I was the only common denominator in both their lives, and the only thing holding them together in that sort of semi-friendship state. To this day they don't really like to talk to each other or even about each other.

What hurt the most was when I was diagnosed with depression. It was very jarring for me, and for my friends since I never let on that I was having problems. Everyone was really there for me while I was sitting through the first couple weeks - except CJ. Mimi was fabulous about it all, always checking up on me and encouraging me to talk to her. But CJ... I guess she was threatened by the fact that she was no longer the centre of attention. See, she'd been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder a while back and I have to admit, I don't think its as bad as she always claims it is. I do think she sort of exaggerated a bit in order to portray herself as the most fucked-up of us all, like having problems was a competition. So when I was diagnosed with this thing she was sort of weird about it. If it came up in conversation she'd find a way to bring it back to her and her problems. She wouldn't really ask me how I was feeling, or anything about my life, or really care. I actually don't think she knows the seriousness of it or the issues that led to my breakdown in the first place. I found out from my friend Kylie the other day that she had been going around talking to others about my diagnosis, saying that I should stop making such a big deal out of it and get some help - never mind the fact that I didn't really bring it up too often and I was getting help in the form of therapy and medication, while she was doing fuck-all to sort out her own issues. I trust Kylie's word, and she admitted that she was uncomfortable with the whole conversation she had with CJ because I hadn't told her about everything myself. It just really hurts that I've spent so many years investing myself emotionally into our friendship, being there for her when she needed it, and to have that all sort of thrown back in my face when I needed her. It taught me a valuable lesson about her, one I should've learned a long time ago - I can't trust her.

I don't really know if I'll get her to read this. But if she ever does, I'm not sorry. I needed to get that out there somewhere. I'll probably make Mimi read it though.

Sorry to anyone who thought something interesting would happen in this post - yep, it's just me bitching. I needed to get it all out. Thanks for reading this far.

Next time, then!