At Tuesday's night PTO meeting - Joli - a wonderful chick and becoming a friend - put an ad pulled out of a magazine on the table - It shows a picture of the inside of a bathroom stall and etched into the wall says "KARA B IS A LOVELY PERSON!!!!" I thought that this was pretty cool - as I'm Kara B. (though I'm sure I'm not the only Kara B. in the world). It was mine to keep - and I think that I will frame it.
This morning I pulled it out and looked into what the ad was all about. At the bottom of the ad it says "be nice behind someone's back, DO IT AT FACEBOOK.COM/MEANSTINKS." So off I went to facebook and typed in "Mean Stinks" in the search field.
It's a facebook community to stop bullying between girls. Here's what the info blurb on the page says:
"Mean Stinks. What kind of Mean? Girl-to-Girl Mean. Face-to-face, text-to-text, pen-to-bathroom-stall-door, whatever. Whether you’ve been mean or been meaned, this page is for undoing it. For being nice behind someone’s back. Cool to someone’s face. Or Facebook."
It's a way for girls who are being bullied to get help and talk about what happens to them in the world." It includes an app called "Good Graffiti" - which lets girls 'scrawl' good graffiti about a friend on their facebook wall. Like ' "Kara B. is a lovely person."
So all of this info searching has occurred in the last 15 minutes and I am crying as I type this. In junior high and high school - I was too quiet and watched the world around me with such intensity in my eyes that it freaked people out. I also had 'buck teeth." I had no friends. I was an outcast. An outcast of the outcasts. I ran cross country and track and all of my teammates bullied me at one time or another. Nothing physical - but bullying between girls rarely is. I thought that I had one friend. Her name was Lisa. Until one day she told me she did not want me to eat lunch at her table anymore. I was too weird for her. She was embarrassed by me because I was too quiet. I did not know where to go to eat lunch. So, I started hiding in the bathroom stall in the locker room to eat. This was the moment when my trust was shattered - and would not start to mend for 20 years.
Being a part of my son's school's PTO is really out of my comfort zone. But I want to make a difference and I want to be a part of my son's education. Because of everything that happened in junior high and high school - I am extremely socially awkard - and I have huge trust issues. There have been times in the past few months that I just have not wanted to continue on with the PTO. It is at times too much to be involved with so many other 'girls.' I tend to go into any relationship with the preconceived idea that I am going to get hurt. So, I keep everyone at an arms distance away. Not letting the walls around me ever come down - with fear that I will be hurt again. Other than my husband (who is my best friend) I do not have any close friends. I just have acquaintances. I tend to even keep my husband behind that wall at times.
I've had a lot of self-realizations lately and I think that all of my self-discovery has been leading to this moment.
The moment where - a cool chick who is becoming my friend - puts an ad from a magazine that says "KARA B. IS A LOVELY PERSON' down on the table in front of me.
I think that it's a turning point in my life. For me to start letting people in again. To start developing relationships. To learn to trust.
To finally have a friend.
