Something Personal (1)

Hi there, to all my anonymous readers!

Time for something personal. Mainly the reason why I am joining the happy challenge, the reason why I need more happiness in my life. I know that my story can be seen as attention-seeking and a call for pity. Or anything similar to that. But that is not my intention. The reason why I want to tell my story is because I hope that you can understand me better and because I need to get it all out.

I am the youngest of my family. I have an elder sister. We are 1,5 years apart and that is a small time span. My life was fine till a few years into elementary school. I had friends, school was easy, I was happy. But teachers noticed that school was to easy for me so I had to make some tests and the result was that I was allowed to skip a year. And so I did and hell began.
Skipping a year meant begin in the same year my sister was in, a whole new class (not with my sister as each year consisted of 2 or 3 classes), people who did not know me, and did not want to welcome me. I managed to get one friend but she moved away during the year and misery began. I was the weak spot, the small girl which was always kind, willing to help others and who happened to be smarter than everyone.
It seams wrong to say it but it is true. The people who picked on me and made my life miserable were all less intelligent. Here, in the Netherlands, after elementary school there are three possible choices for high school based on the intelligence of the child. And I happened to be in a class where about 40% went to the lowest level of high school. And yes, that were the people who picked on me. Because I was younger and smarter, I think. I guess they were jealous. Back then I did not know what to do so I kept to myself and got lonely. I somehow survived and I was very happy when I discovered that only 5 or 6 people (and none of them were people who bullied me) would go to the same high school as I would.

I wanted to start over, make new friends. And therefore I started again. I was, again, the youngest and one of the smartest (I don’t even do it on purpose) and I could not easily make friends. So I got picked on again though by different people. Funny enough though it was again someone who did not like the fact that I was smarter than he was or ever would be. I often cycled to school by either myself or with my sister, who went to the same high school, and her friends. Her friends also became a bit my friends which she, of course, did not like. But she did not (want to?) see that I had nobody else so the trouble between us started. I might tell you about the trouble between my sister and me another time.

Somehow I managed to gather a few friends during that first year of high school. But the bullying went on during the second year. I was lucky that the main bully had to leave my high school because he was not intelligent enough. He did not meet the requirements to continue to the third year of high school. Without him, I was stronger and without him the bullying quickly stopped. And I have to confess, I felt so free that I was such a bitch during that year. But it felt so good to be ‘free’. After that, high school was not that bad any more. But the damage was done and I am still struggling with it. I always feel left out, whenever friends met with each other without me, or did not ask me to join them even when I was standing right next to them or new about it. And because I was younger I could not go with them when they started going out on weekends and that made me even more unhappy. I was jealous. And I still am because I still feel left out. But eventually graduation came and went. We all went our own paths. People who said that we would never lose touch stopped answering their emails. Contact got lost. And I gave up, apparently I was not interesting enough. Not worth their attention.

I went to college. And it started out good. I even had friends. For the first time I had found someone who’d understand me. Who thought similar. But there were also people I did not like, some more than others. And I know I am bossy sometimes, and I always speak my mind so people did not like me very much. That was the main reason I decided to do my minor abroad. I wanted to be away from those horrible people. The talking behind my back. And when I came back it did not care anyone, I was alone again.

Two years have passed since my time abroad. I graduated successful to Bachelor of Science and am currently doing an internship for my master. I am sure I will find my way somehow but it is hard.

I am grateful for the good times I had with some people. And I miss them. I really do. I think about them a lot. I think back to London in 2007, the night we went to eat pizza. A night I felt accepted and happy. I think back to Rome in 2008, I loved that time. Also the holiday in Barcelona with two friends after high school graduation. And I think back to all the Starbucks-moments during the first two years of my bachelor.

It is not the case that I am totally friendless. I still have people I can talk to and I enjoy the time with them. But I don’t seem to have any close friends. Or seem to have anyone which values me as highly as I value them. That has always been my problem and the cause of that horrible feeling. The feeling of being left out, forgotten, not cared about.
Because of all the bullying I am afraid. Afraid to be different, afraid to be disliked. I almost never say anything during lunch on my internship because it feels like it is not interesting and nobody cares or likes me. I am insecure though I do my best to pretend that I am fine. Every new day is a new battle to fight.
The battle to survive.

Thanks for reading if anyone had the courage to read this till the end. It was hard and painful to write but I think it is good to let it out. In time more blogs about this will follow as my story is not yet finished.

Love,
C