Fake friends

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High school for me was what nightmares were made of, at least the first couple of years. I feel like that's when I really discovered how horrible people really could be. I tried so hard to fit in and I wasn't particularly good at it. I was never good at being something I wasn't and I'm actually grateful for that now but at the time I always felt like I was nothing. I look back on the first two years of high school as a learning experience. It was there that I learned who my friends were and who they weren't. I had some "friends" that I was in gym class with me. Some I had gotten to know the year before in jr. high. We got to the high school and things quickly changed for whatever reason. I had this all-girls gym class I somehow got stuck in. I hated PE but I thought at least I had my friends there with me. It started out ok and we all grouped up and we ate lunch together but then one day this girl who was a grade older than us came and joined the group and she didn't like me. She found me annoying and maybe I was I don't know, but I definitely didn't deserve the treatment I got after that. One of the girls in the group of "friends" I had was actually my cousin. I never particularly cared for her to begin with. She was just obnoxious towards me and always had been. She made fun of my handwriting (I have fine motor issues and had to work super hard to just make my writing legible) and she told me I should write with my left hand and that it would be just as good. She also used to randomly kick me under the table for who knows what reason. Anyway, she was in the same group and I tolerated her but sometimes I did purposely do things that I knew annoyed her because she wasn't nice to me but the other girl found my annoying her to be annoying. I found myself doing those things when she was starting being rude to me. Eventually, I noticed them starting to separate from me and start laughing at me behind my back and just not being the nicest to me and I wasn't about to stay anywhere I wasn't wanted. I distanced myself pretty quickly. My cousin once asked me to print something for her and considering the fact she was family I felt I had to and I was nice enough to do it for her although if I could go back and do it over I probably wouldn't have. I remember handing it to her and them getting snippy with her and with me because she dared to talk to me and she was like "she did me a favor". She actually ALMOST looked sympathetic towards me but clearly not enough to speak up for me especially considering how snotty she had been to me prior to all of this. The thing is the others would try to pretend like they were my friends when I wasn't in gym class or at lunch. When I was in classes where the other girl couldn't see them around me they all tried to act like they were suddenly my friend and I wanted no part of that. I didn't need fake friends. I remember ignoring them after that. That girl really wanted me to be alone. I never understood why she cared that they talked to me. I would never dictate who someone else was friends with even if I didn't like them. I would suck it up when my cousin was in the group even though I didn't like her most of the time and never once tried to tell anyone they shouldn't be friends with her. She seemed very controlling. You don't have to like everyone but to make others turn on someone seems especially horrible. I often like to believe she did me a favor by showing me who my real friends were and weren't. I remember gym class being super awkward after that. I felt very alone. No one wanted to be partners with me after that. It was difficult. I remember being shoved in that group against my will by the gym teacher one time after that. I was stuck playing tennis with them and they gave me attitude and I snapped and said "I didn't want to be here either so just shove it" and they were purposely making sure I never got a turn but suddenly my brother and his friends drove into the parking lot (I can't remember why they were just then arriving) and suddenly they all started trying to be nice to me and trying to act like they were my friends and I made sure to walk away from them. My brother knew I didn't like them. I rode the bus with one of them and I was talking to someone about something and she suddenly butted in and dared to act like she knew me or was my friend and I rolled my eyes at her and ignored her. Maybe they didn't truly hate me but to treat me the way they did and then try to be my friend the next minute really ticked me off. I was far too nice for my own good back then or I would have told them where to shove it when they tried to pretend to be my friends when it benefited them. I remember I went from this huge table of "friends" to sitting alone for a little bit until I realized my actual friends had a table nearby and I started sitting with them. Had I realized they had a table there I probably would have sat with them sooner. I sat with the other misfits but they were the kind of people I knew I could trust. They were a bit goofy but they were honest and genuinely good people. The kind of people I wish I had made sure I hung out with from the beginning. High school was terrible the first couple of years but boy did I figure out who I could and couldn't trust. I'm grateful I've never truly shared major details about my life with anyone. No way did I want to give them that much material to hold over my head. I ended up going to a career high school my junior and senior years of high school and ironically most of them ended up going there too but we were separated into different areas and we had two buses that took us there and they weren't on my bus or in any of my classes. My cousin was in one of them briefly but she ended up moving out of the area and after that I seldom saw any of them and I couldn't be more grateful. It gave me the power to start over. I still had people there I didn't like and who didn't like me but I enjoyed what I did and focused on academics and didn't really let people know me at all. I was quiet and I studied and I made a few friends along the way but I didn't open myself up and therefore didn't have any real issues. Had a few people try to be jerks to me but I learned to start sticking up for myself. I used to sit in the front row of my English class because it was easier to learn. We didn't have assigned seats but I had sat there forever before one day showing up and this guy snottily said "it's not assigned" I shrugged and moved back to the back. He proceeded to get there first and take the seat and one day I got there first and took the seat back and he walked in and had the audacity to tell me it was his seat and I smiled and said "they're not assigned" after that I had almost no issues with him. I stood my ground and I'm proud of it. That's what I learned from my previous two years of experience. I learned to not talk about myself, I learned to be quiet and blend in, I learned to be kind but also to stand my ground and not just let people walk over me, I learned who I could trust. While I felt hurt at the time I learned a lot from that experience. I don't know what happened to all of the girls but I do know my cousin doesn't have the best life or at least she didn't. She ended up deleting me off FB after having added me to begin with. I didn't deal with her FB rants and I would call her out when she was wrong and she didn't like that so I got booted. I stopped taking stuff. I don't know what happened with the other girls but I've found that I don't really care.