{"id":57336,"date":"2011-08-18T19:14:24","date_gmt":"2011-08-18T23:14:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/57336\/god-outcasts\/"},"modified":"2011-08-18T19:14:24","modified_gmt":"2011-08-18T23:14:24","slug":"god-outcasts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/57336\/god-outcasts\/","title":{"rendered":"God Help the Outcasts"},"content":{"rendered":"

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When I was a little girl, I was very shy and very sensitive. \u00a0My feelings were often hurt easily but at the same time because of this, I was also able to be sensitive to other people’s feelings as well and did my best to try and not hurt anyone. (Some things never change.) Being an only child and also being one of the youngest kids on my block (everyone else was an older teenager) I never really had any friends or playmates my own age but learned to how to keep myself entertained and happy with the help of my toys and my vivid imagination. But while I loved and enjoyed my very own little playworld, the one thing I always wanted to have was a friend. On TV shows like The Brady Bunch, everyone just always seemed to have friends automatically so once I started school, I assumed it would be just like on TV. I thought I would just automatically make new friends, everyone would like me and everyone would be nice and play nice with each other just like on TV. HA! This goes to show you what happens when you use a family with an Astroturf lawn as your source of reality.<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

When I was 6 years old, I entered the first grade (I never went to kindergarten but already knew the alphabet, numbers and how to read, thanks to my parents, Sesame Street, and The Electric Company). There was a small group of girls my age there who were all \u201cbest friends\u201d and they actually welcomed me into their \u201cclick\u201d immediately. Now if anyone has seen the movie \u201cMean Girls\u201d, starring Lindsay Lohan, you will know that in the movie there is a click of girls that others called \u201cThe Plastics\u201d because they all seemed so pretty and perfect on the outside, yet they were really a bunch of \u201cmean girls\u201d on the inside. Well, clicks of girls just like this happens in the real world all of the time and can exist at any age, as I was soon to discover\u2026\u2026<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

Now while I was happy to have friends for the first time in my life, my happiness was short lived once I discovered what else was involved with these friendships. These little girls may not have been all bad, but they weren’t all good, either. I saw them often exclude another little girl who was born with two fingers shorter than the rest from playing with us simply because she was different. I saw them sometimes tease a boy who had asthma and was, admittedly, a bit “different” but still not so different that he deserved to be teased. I saw them be two faced with one another as two girls in particular would call each other their “best friend” yet when one was absent from school for a day, the other would say “Oh I am so glad she’s not here. I don’t like her” only to be completely overjoyed upon their return, saying how much they missed the other. The sad irony of it all was they had everyone fooled, teachers and parents alike, into believing that they were truly just as I described \u201cThe Plastics\u201d before. No one could see or had any idea what it was REALLY like to be in this inner circle. <\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

At such a young age and having been so sheltered up until then, I didn’t know exactly how to verbalize what was going so I could tell my parents what was bothering me. All I knew was I didn’t like it. I used to dread going to school so much because of it that my stomach was often tied up in knots and every Sunday night, I would get sick to my stomach literally because I dreaded returning to school on Monday morning and have to deal with them. My parents would always ask me ask what was wrong and reassured me that I could tell them, but I just didn’t have the words or the courage to. I also didn’t have the guts to risk becoming an “outsider”…..then at least….. so I just bottled up all of my pain and feelings and kept it all inside of me. But then one day, a bright spot entered my life. <\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

About 2 months before school let out for summer a new little girl joined the class. Her name was Sakina Paige. She was also very shy and quiet and had a very calm but sweet demeanor about her. She also joined out “group” but she was different. She wasn’t like the rest of the girls. Her and I took an instantly liking to one another and became best friends. While we played Barbies with the “The Plastics” we always enjoyed it best when we could just play them with each other. I was often sick with stomach viruses and sore throats throughout the 1st and 2nd grade and when I would return to school I usually wasn\u2019t up to rough play in the schoolyard at recess. Sakina would always sit and play games with me while everyone else ran around and played. I never felt alone having her as my friend and her friendship meant the world to me. Her presence in my life made having to deal with The Plastics bearable. We were all together from the 1st grade through the 3rd grade and while some \u201cplastics\u201d left, new ones came in to replace them but nothing ever changed \u2026.until one day\u2026 but it was not for the better. Just as unexpectedly as Sakina had come into my life, she left it the same way. One day I called her like I often did but no one answered. I tried calling her for two weeks and the results were always the same, NOTHING. Without warning, without reason\u2026.and without even as so much as a goodbye\u2026\u2026 Sakina was gone from my life. I never heard from her again. When I returned to school that September, one of the teachers told me she thought that Sakina and her Mom had moved to Texas but they weren\u2019t sure. If that was the case, why couldn\u2019t she have just simply told me she was moving away? I felt so sad, so hurt and so alone. I felt like I had just lost my best friend\u2026..because I had. What made it worse was not only had I lost Sakina, but now I was left to fend with The Plastics all by myself. <\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

As I got older I became wiser and less and less tolerant of the \u201cpolitics\u201d in our little group. Eventually I found the words to tell my parents about what was going on and eventually I started to learn to speak up to The Plastics, too. Then one day, my supposed \u201cfriends\u201d all turned on me. I don\u2019t recall anything in particular happening this day but for whatever reason, a few of the girls from our group cornered me in the classroom and started tormenting me and throwing bits of modeling clay at me and refused to stop. I believe we had a substitute teacher that day so everything was a free for all anyway. I managed somehow to break away from them, ran into the bathroom, and cried my eyes out. Everything changed that day and something had also changed inside of me. My supposed \u201cfriends\u201d no longer played with me and now I was often alone on the playground. I was marked \u201can outcast\u201d. I became quiet and distant from the other kids because after this and after what happened with Sakina, I felt I could no longer trust anyone in fear that someone else would hurt me, too. I put up an emotional wall so high and wide that I would not, or could not, let anyone through it. Strange thing is for as much hurt as I felt now being on the outside looking in, I also felt free for the very first time. <\/strong>Eventually I befriended other outcasts, but at the same time always kept them at a safe emotional distance, never really letting them in. I became a lone wolf.<\/strong><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n


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Both in childhood and adulthood, I have always found the outcasts of the world to be amongst the nicest people I have ever known. When you\u2019re rejected by the world, you really have no reason to be anyone but your own true self because you have no one to try and impress or put airs on for. And then again isn\u2019t it often the nice, sweet, and sensitive kids and people in this world that are signaled out from the rest and picked on? It\u2019s because we\u2019re viewed as easy targets that wont fight back. It\u2019s viewed that our kindness makes us \u201cweak\u201d and thus different from the rest. God help us outcasts\u2026but in reality, just who is need of \u201chelp\u201d more? Those of us on the outside\u2026.. or those who choose to place us there and keep us there?<\/font><\/font><\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was a little girl, I was very shy and very sensitive. \u00a0My feelings were often hurt easily but at the same time because of this, I was also able to be sensitive to other people’s feelings as well and did my best to try and not hurt anyone. (Some things never change.) Being […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,2,11],"tags":[4065,4064],"class_list":["post-57336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-other","category-people","tag-being-different","tag-outcasts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57336\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}