The very fact that I have wonderful friends is by God’s grace (you might want to read the previous entry if you want to know what I mean… it has been a very long time since that post… better late than…?), but there are a handful of friendships in which I see His grace all the more distinctly. Some of my dearest sisters and I started out very rocky. We really didn’t like each other.
This story tops them all.
I was done with that private Catholic school. I hated the school, I hated the kids, I hated the green jumpers, I hated going to mass, I hated the statue of Mary sitting in the back of every classroom, I hated all of it. I was accepted into the Magnet School Program, and I was free from that green and flesh colored building.
I was going to start middle school at a brand new school. I was going to make friends with the Asian girls. I was going to be cool. I was going to “have a life.”
Things did not start very ideally. We read the school dress code and it had said something like no “tight fitting clothing” so mom and I went out and bought those huge T-shirts that just hung from the shoulders and some pairs of jeans. I figured out right away, that the school dress code didn’t mean for you to wear things that fit like potato sacks.
I really don’t remember how I survived. ”Barely scraped by” seems to be a good description. There was no way I was going to make friends with the Asian girls. They looked like they had already figured out how to handle themselves socially, and I did not fit in.
Intimidated and despairing that all my ideal hopes of making friends were dashed, I started clinging to girls who would take me. It didn’t matter whether I liked them or not, just as long as I didn’t have to wander around at lunch by myself. My heart still ached and dreamed and hoped to be an Asian girl (haha that sounds funny). I wanted to be cool and collected. I wanted to learn how to dress, how to pluck my eyebrows so thin that they looked like pencil drawings, and how to color my lips with brown lip liner only (no color in the middle). I wanted to know what they do after school and in the weekends. I wanted to hang out at the mall. I settled for the skater girl and the goth.
Then I saw Jessica.
She didn’t fit the typical Asian girl image. She wore a simple T-shirt and jeans (not the potato sack kind), and I couldn’t imagine her walking around a mall with a bunch of girls. I couldn’t imagine her swooning over belonging to a group; she just didn’t seem to care what other people thought of her. Yet she was friends with the Asian girls (even the older ones!).
She ignored me completely. I don’t think she even knew my name. I don’t even remember exactly when or how I met her, we didn’t have any classes together. All I knew about her was that she had what I wanted and didn’t even care, and she was aloof, intimidating, and made me feel small.
I confided with a classmate (probably voicing my tangled up thoughts, while trying to wrangle up an ally) that,
“I think Jessica is a @#%*@. Don’t you think so?”
Little did I know that this classmate was good friends with Jessica.
The next day, after lunch, I was waiting outside the classroom waiting for the second bell to ring for class. In the corner of my eye, I see Jessica and I cringe remembering what I said about her and feeling frightened that she might have heard. She seems to be walking in my direction and I try to ignore it, but gradually the dread grows inside my stomach until it turned me cold all up and down as she stops right in front of me,
“I heard what you said about me. Why don’t you say that to my FACE??”
yikes. She made me feel like a coward to have talked about her behind her back, but I mustered up all the pride and self-righteousness I had inside of me to conquer the paralyzing fear and muttered out,
“I called you a *@#&^”
“What did you say? I didn’t hear you.”
“y…you’re a *@#&^”
We stood there. I mean what was supposed to happen next?
Then the bell rang and I scurried off to class, ignoring my curious looking classmates.
to be continued…
