Might As Well

I dove into the deep end. Ha!

Last week, I was simply playing around with some characters. As of today, I have a full fledged second graphic novel pitch. It's a story that insisted on being made.

I started with the idea of exploring the middle school years of the characters from my YA prose concept, and it kind of took the reigns of my brain. I knew that Vietta is a witch with ADHD, and was thinking about how that would play out during her middle school years. In the first musings, I knew she was going to lose her best friend and thought she just moved away. However, some of my personal friendship experiences slipped into the mix and I knew that her best friend was going to dump her. That was the story begging to be told.

Going into 6th grade, one of my elementary school best friends moved away. The other one had clearly found their soul-mate and the two were attached at the hip. They're still together. They tried to include me, but being a third wheel was not ideal. So, I made new middle school friends. Or, I thought I did. On the walk home on the last day of 6th grade, the group deliberately crossed the street to ditch me. When I tried to catch-up and cross over to join them, they crossed back to the other side, purposefully trying to avoid me and giggling about it. I cried the rest of my lonely walk home. To this day, I do not know what atrocious thing I did to be treated in that way.

However, the ADHD diagnosis in my thirties did bring clarity.

I've always been more of a quiet observer until I feel connected or feel like I've got something valid to contribute, and then I talk. A lot. For some people, probably too much. I'm an awkward human. I guess I was too awkward for those 6th graders, and for others over the years.

My new 7th grade friends ghosted me at the end of the year. It happened again in 8th grade. My 9th grade friend posted on her LiveJournal some nasty remarks about how guys she was into were interested in me and I wasn't even that pretty. I never talked to her by choice again. I felt unworthy of friends, but knew I deserved better than that.

When my eldest son started middle school, it was impossible not to be triggered by the parallels of hurt he was experiencing. It also didn't help that I was being ghosted and dumped AGAIN by my closest adult friend.

I don't know if I'll ever get over the scars of these failed friendships. Most days I feel lonely and like I'll never be good enough for others to want to accept me as I am. I'm thankful for the handful of amazing people I get to call friends and think about them often. But I also don't want to burden them, so I stay quiet with the walls up protecting what's left wishing I had the guts to reach out.

Maybe if I had a book in middle school that normalized friendship loss and that kind of grief, the scars would have been just a little less deep.