text: Hey. My name's- actually, I can't tell you, and welcome to the story of my life. And trust me, you don't want it. You know, I've always been a bit of an outcast. Everyone always had a cheat code to get through, except for me. Of course, I'm not blind. I see that others suffer too. I see the jock who's allowed to do anything he wants, but it's because his parents don't care. I see the kid who cries silently in the cafeteria while his friends ignore him because it's a regular thing. I see the girl whose own therapist turned against her because of her manipulative father. I know I'm not the only one suffering. It's just that.... for some strange reason, everyone knows naturally how to do certain things and I don't. Everyone knew how to fit in to some extent, even the 'loners' would immediately find a friend group in the first week of school. Even when I first went to school and no one had formed a group yet, it seemed that they would all gravitate to finding a certain type of people they wanted to talk to, and those people would feel the same. Nope. Not this girl. I stood wondering why everyone else could talk to each other and I couldn't. It was like I.... didn't exist. While everyone laughed and joked in the cafeteria, I ate by myself. Maybe it was because I sat at the allergy table. Of course, there were at least three other kids there, but they were crazy and all boys. I don't have anything against boys in general, but I couldn't relate to them or understand their jokes. They were actually a bit crazy, though. One proposed to a pokemon card, while another ate a peanut butter jelly sandwich on purpose. And he smiled and laughed afterwards, even as the rest of the table basically shrieked because, well, WE'RE ALL ALLERGIC TO NUTS. Oh, and I might of had bullies, but that's the thing with me. I don't know where to draw the line. I didn't know if it was bullying or I was just being dramatic. I still don't know now. Let's fast forwards to when I moved before third grade. I finally got a 'best friend'! But let's face it, friendships when you can't understand them don't last them. After all, my friendship started with a duck eraser and a purple-green tie-dye pencil. My first friend was Karen. Yeah. Let that sink in. She'd sit by me at lunch everyday, and I'd love having someone to talk to. In the middle of fourth grade, however, she went away to China because her grandmother died. I was so excited when she came back, but.... she didn't talk to me anymore really. She sat by Molly, who was one of my 'popular' friends. Although, I don't know if I could call her a friend or not. She always seemed a bit toxic, but I could never tell. I also had Kaitlyn, who also seemed a bit toxic, but less than Molly. She'd sit by me every now and then, but she'd bring her friends and talk to them the whole time. Now, remember, this is the allergy table, so there weren't really a lot of kids there. There was one other kid called Abigail on the other side of the table, but she was surrounded with friends. I could see why. She was perfect. Beautiful, never got any lower than an A+, and extremely kind. She didn't want to see me sit alone, and neither did the teachers, and eventually I figured out that the teachers wouldn't leave me alone until I didn't sit alone. So I sat with them. Honestly, I doubt that she really likes me. Don't get me wrong, she's a great person, but I was never really talked to. I couldn't really get into their conversations. She probably only talked to me out of pity and obligation. So I was a lonely girl. I didn't act like everyone else, either. Basically all the grade either hated me or silently judged me. Recess? Ah. I played tag with a bunch of boys. Again, pretty sure they hated me. Pretty sure they still hate me. I honestly didn't care too much, I just wanted to play tag, which I loved to do. But it did hurt. I was known, I think, as the somewhat-quiet-yet-loud serious loner. It was in sixth grade when things started going both downhill and uphill. Alright, so remember I said Kaitlyn visited every now and then? Well now she had her own pretty big friend group. I considered them as good friends, though I know now they didn't like me much. A girl named Kailey came then, and they all became way more toxic. Now, again, I'm still not sure if what people do to me is bullying or not. So I'll stop mentioning it. However, a new girl came with Kaitlyn one day. Her name was Lisa. Lisa is another absolutely perfect girl. She doesn't even have to try. But I won't rant again on what other people have that I don't. Lisa is a really great friend to this day, and I'm really glad I met her. Another friend I made in sixth grade was Kira. Now, Kira had just moved in this year too, but unlike Lisa, I didn't really meet her in school. Sure, we knew each other existed, but we never really talked. From third grade, I enrolled in a very 'tough-person' sport. It's not a well-known one either. I was never good at it, no matter how hard I tried, and I didn't understand how my coaches didn't give up on me yet. Again, pretty sure most of them hated me. But basically all the girls there joined after me, so I tried forming 'friendships' with them. It went sort of well. Everyone else in the club still hated me, but at least the people who joined after me were still friendly. I tried. So Kira was one of those people. Now, I'm not good at fencing, but I can teach some basics, so I tried to help. Now I have a personality that's kind of hard to ignore. If I like you and I think we have a chance at friends, I'll be nice and act normal. By the way, normal for me is dark humor and sarcasm while smiling. If I don't like you and I know you don't like me, then I'll be ignoring you and acting cold. There'll still be sarcasm, but not in the joking-around-with-friends way. Of course, this got me into trouble because kids are stupid and decided to ship me with every male they know. Because I am the joke of the grade. I didn't like that, and here's a lesson guys. If the person you're 'teasing' seems genuinely upset even if you think it's a small thing, stop. It probably doesn't feel like it. Either way, at this point in time I started to realize that some people actually liked me when I acted like myself. The third friend I made was a girl called Stella. I met her because our grade was rehearsing how graduation would go, and she was next to me. Yeah. I started feeling much better, because when she introduced me to her friends, I saw that they actually liked me, and not out of obligation. The main friend I made from that was Harvey, someone who I saw was absolutely fine with being himself and was liked for it. In seventh grade, Stella would eventually introduce me to a girl named Clara, who I also became friends with. She also helped me rekindle my friendship with Karen. Now, I wasn't closest with Kaitlyn, but I did become friends with another one of her friends called Aria. Yeah, things started getting better now that I had friends. However, the best part had yet to come. A few months into the school year, during gym, I was talking to a girl I was friendly with called Ashten. She introduced me to a girl called Emily. Shiny chocolate hair, blue eyes, and an identical twin. Now, me and Emily weren't immediately friends. A couple of days later, I was sitting in front of my fifth period class for lunch again, when I saw Emily. The thing was, somehow, we had never ran into each other before even though we ate lunch in the same place. I guess the days I was there she was at lunch group. I haven't mentioned this before, but music is my life. I exist for it. I was listening to music and then Emily asked me what it was and I gave her my other earbud. We hit it off after that. We were so different yet so alike. I was like this girl with a bad reputation and hated a whole lot of things, yet she was this girl who loved basically everything, and hated no one. Except for Hitler. Yeah. Essentially I was this little bubble of darkness and she was a ball of sunshine. But despite this, we were alike in so many ways. She loved listening to the new songs I discovered, and we messed around and laughed at everything. We understood each other, too. We could tell each other things we'd never tell anyone else and not think anything of it because we knew the other wouldn't ever tell anyone else. We even have a handshake and best friend necklaces. They're yin-yang necklaces, and of course, Emily got the white sparkly one while I got the black one. It's better that way, they match with our closets. I'm in 8th grade now, the last year of middle school. It's only been like a year and a half but I feel closer to her than I have with anyone else. You know what the best part of our friendship is? We could be apart for a long time and it would still be like nothing's changed. Except her height. Why is she so tall.