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In high school I had a much more mixed gendered group of close friends than I do now. My best friend was a guy, I went to a very small school- around 30 people per grade- and we all more or less hung out. One of the girls in my class was extremely mean. To everyone! But particularly to me. Because this woman- girl, we were all children at the time- did not fit the typical bully profile (that is to say nothing except that she was not a tall blonde, hot in the Victoria’s Secret fashion show way, with a very wealthy dad and overly indulgent mom) many of the people in my grade did not believe she was bullying me.
I pointed out incidents- some of them damning. Parties every single other person in our class was invited to and the like- and everyone insisted it was a simple oversight. She hadn’t meant it! Look at her! She’s nice!
But she wasn’t nice. And no one believed me, particularly my male friends who had a view of the way women interact that was completely based on movie stereotypes and not at all on emotional intelligence or listening. (Again, we were all in high school, this is less a condemnation than a sign of the times.) I had unsupportive parents, a difficult school life, a dangerously bad case of bulimia and what felt like no hope. “I don’t know where my life is going but it cannot stay here, I cannot stay here physically or emotionally.”
And so I left Waco, and leaving was difficult. In my first semester at NYU, I spent more than three weeks hospitalized. But the only way out was up and even when I knew nothing nothing else, I knew that. And so I swam toward the light until I broke the surface.
Recently, I have felt very similar emotions, ones I had not felt in over a decade. A familiar terror, a sense of being suspended and unsure of where to go or what to do but very aware that something needed to change.
But I am already divorced, surely I felt the same feelings when my marriage was ending?