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I Should�ve Taken That Left Turn at Albuquerque |
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Hello and welcome. If you're new here, be a dear and Read my Disclaimer. My diary not good enough for you? Fine, be that way. Try these instead: plf
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2001-01-07 - 2:56 pm� I've been reading Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood. It's an excellent book. I feel very strongly for the main character. That's what really makes a good book for me-- if I can care about a character that I know is fictional. The book has got me thinking too, which is another thing that I hope for in a book. The story is about an artist named Elaine who is remembering important relationships in her life, particularly her relationship with her Cordelia, "best friend" from childhood. The main thing that she seems to take from her childhood is the feeling that little girls are mean, not just in general, but mean to their friends. This has been bothering me. I've been thinking about it a lot. The thing that bothers me about it, is that in my experience, it is true. During my childhood, I was both the Elaine and the Cordelia. I had been both on the giving and the receiving end of this girlish cruelty between friends. When I was in elementary school, I had lots of friends. I played with many different little girls, and a few little boys, at various times during school, and after. Since Kindergarten, I had a best friend. She is no longer a friend of mine, for various reasons that I'm still not completely sure of, but we were best friends for most of our lives. I would drift through different circles of friends during each year of school, but Kristen was always my constant. We played together all the time, our mothers got to be friends with each other too. We stuck together no matter what. We shared all our secrets, we giggled and gossiped, we made up our own games and playtime routines. Sometimes though, for very little good reason, we could also make each other absolutely miserable. We would do things to each other, deliberately hurtful things. Every now and again she would invite another girl to play when I came over, and the two of them would gang up on me. Sometimes I would invite someone over to play instead of Kristen, and then I would call Kris afterwards and tell her all the things we did, all the fun we had, and that I was thinking that I might play with the other girl at recess sometimes. We knew we had power over one another. We knew that we could hurt each other's feelings. We did and said things to one another that we would never have dreamed of doing or saying to girls who weren't close friends of ours. I cried about stuff she'd done to me many times. I never told my mom on her, and I'm pretty sure she never told on me either, because we were best friends, and best friends didn't make each other cry. I knew that if I told on her, it would put a dent in our friendship. It's not like this stuff happened constantly. When I think back to my friendship with her, I look back on it fondly. I remember how close we were, how much we depended on one another. I don't remember how nasty we could be to each other. When we hit about grade 4, we had kind of solidified ourselves into a little group of friends. There were four of us. Me and Kris, and two other girls. Sometimes other girls would play with us too, we weren't exclusive, but at the core, it was the four of us. It was around this time that Kristen and I stopped hurting each other as often. We had new people who we could have power over. See, you can't really have power to really hurt a little girl unless you are a close friend of hers. And it seemed to have more effect to gang up on somebody in a group. If there were three people ganging up on one, the one felt like they were alone, completely friendless. We'd share around the hate a little. I don't ever remember Kristen being the one who was ganged up on. I was occasionally the target, but it was mostly one of our new best friends, Nikki. None of this was ever planned. We didn't ever decide to gang up and be mean to Nikki. We never even considered that we might be in the wrong. She would do something, something completely harmless, and we would laugh at her about it. We would pick at her about it, until she started to cry and run off. I don't know why we picked at her. She was an easy target, I guess. She was new to the school, I think she started in grade 4, whereas the other 3 of us had been there since Kindergarten. She had different slang then we did. We'd tease her for that. And we'd tease her about her clothes sometimes. Sometimes we really wouldn't have any reason. Looking back on it, I think it was because of the four of us, she cried most easily. Somehow, despite the fact that we were being miserable little shits, we led ourselves to believe that she was the one who caused problems. She was the one who'd always end up telling us that she wasn't going to be our friend anymore. That hurt us! It didn't really hurt us, because we knew that by the end of the day it would all be good again, but we pretended that it hurt us. And usually we would be the ones to go and apologize first. We were the ones in power. We decided when she'd been crying too long. We got to decide when it was over. And we weren't like this to each other all the time. Most of the time we were just friends. Or sometimes we'd all band together and pick on an outsider. But every now and again, we'd hurt each other. On purpose, and with no real guilt. I feel bad about it now, when I look back on it, but I don't ever remember feeling too bad about it at the time. Why do little girls do this? I mean, I know that little boys are mean too, but for some reason they are more open about it. They'd fight without the pretence of friendship. Or they'd hurt each other, but everyone would know about it. It wouldn't be a private fight, a secret, like it was between girls.
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The big 3 0 - 2006-06-03 Hello again - 2006-05-03 Random stuff in place of an actual update - 2006-03-15 Pictures. Just Because. - 2006-02-23 Christmas 05 - 2005-12-26 Currently listening to: |
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