The Chronicles of a Childhood Drama Queen #1

I was a stuck up, arrogant, vain, selfish little girl when I was younger. I can see that, now that I've grown up somewhat. I know I could have been so much worse, I could have been a bully, but I think it’s important to realise that just because someone was the victim of bullying as a child, or teenager, it doesn't mean they were nice innocent people at the time. (For the record, children aren't innocent they are fucking monsters, don’t trust them.)

So like I said I could have been a bully and made life horrible for others but I was so wrapped up in my own life and making sure I got what I wanted that I didn't care much for anyone. So here follows the story of my childhood and my realisation that I was not a golden wonder child that glowed inside and out.

I didn't attend pre-school, instead I started Junior Infants at four years of age in a tiny school in the middle of a tiny parish inhabited mainly by old age pensioners (sorry, ‘senior citizens’). There were three girls, one boy and myself in my class. Our school was so small that the first four classes consisting of children 4-9 year olds, were in one classroom and the older four classes of 9-12 year olds were in another. We had two teachers, a secretary and a special education teacher who came in a couple of times a week to help kids with slight learning disabilities. This was the place I spent my first eight years of education. This was where I met my first friend, first enemy, first crush, first bully. It was a place of many firsts for me and in this series of blog posts I plan to tell them to you for the first time.

For the first 3-4 years of school my life was pretty simple, I knew how everything worked, I got on well with my class, I stayed out of the way of big kids and the teachers liked me. My best friend was your stereotypical perfect-popular girl. Well, you know, for seven year olds. Loved by teachers and students alike she was pretty and clever and had an older brother which gave her special ‘Big One’ privileges in the playground. (Like for real, we called the older kids the Big Ones and the youngers the Little Ones. Also everyone in the Little Ones classroom referred to the teacher as Yes. No-one ever understood why but we always did it. I think it must have stemmed from the mishearing of Miss. But no-one ever questioned it we just always called her that. She gave up trying to stop the habit. It went on for years, as in from the time I started school to after I left. For all I know it’s still happening. Then magically when we entered the Big Ones classroom we stopped. It was social suicide for a Big One to call a teacher Yes. And of course we immediately picked up the habit of mocking the Little Ones for calling their teacher Yes. Children can be so naively cruel.)

Everyone wanted to be BFFs with this girl, who for the purpose of this blog we will refer to as B. (Because A could get confusing.)

There was another girl in my class who desperately wanted to be best friends with B. We’re going to call her C. Understand that I hated this girl, C. She was trying to steal my best friend and that was something I couldn’t afford to let happen. Besides that she was just a nasty child, in my childly opinion. She was unintelligent, unfriendly and unpretty. You don’t have to tell me I was a shallow bitch. It’s not that I was even a particularly attractive child, I just had a majorly high opinion of myself and therefore a really low one of everyone else. C was also a major tell-tale, which ought to have won her countless enemies but somehow she still managed to stay high up in the social chain. I credited this to the way she dogged B’s heels as though afraid she would lose sight of her for a second. As well as all this she was the worst person I've ever known for bragging. She got all the newest games and consoles and dolls as well as clothes, DVDs, music, anything she wanted. She lost no time in making sure everyone knew she had them. She always had a story to tell about something interesting, great or funny that she or someone she knew had done - which incidentally never was interesting, great or funny at all, but it never stopped her from telling everyone. And of course she was trying  to steal my best friend. Not to mentioned that she clearly hated me. I have to be honest when I say that she was the first person I experienced bullying from. She did everything to keep me away from B so that she could be alone with her to talk about everyone in the school. I can’t recall the particulars but I know she made many a bitchy comment to me and though I was never one to believe people who told me kids were only mean because they were jealous, but I know for a fact that with C it was pure jealousy through and through. I think she believed herself that I was really B’s Bestest friend and it ate her up inside. When questioned, as she was weekly by C, who her BFFF was, B would respond that we were both her BFFFs! But of course I knew, I knew that she only said that to spare C’s feelings! Truly I was her only BFFF!

I’ve mentioned very little about the third girl in my class who becomes very important later on. For now it’s enough to say that she was part of our friend group but none of us had any say in the friends we had as there was so little choice in our sorry excuse for a school. We all went to each others parties, played together at lunch, invited each other to our houses and acted very much as though we were friends. In truth the only person I liked was B and only then because she popular and known by everyone. Almost subconsciously I saw her as a way to stay at the top of the social tower and even though then I didn’t understand the full importance of social life I knew I was safer being at the top.

None of us shared anything in common because none of us had any real interests. Looking back I realise how much my childhood was controlled by others. We played with the toys that were advertised on TV, we listened to the music that was played on the radio, we watched the shows that everyone was talking about, but none of it because we viewed it as good. We did it because everyone else was and we knew no different. That's what being a child is about. It's about following others because we have not yet discovered what is ours. It's about doing as we're told before we figure out why. No one explains anything to you as a child, you have to pick up pieces as you go and eventually build the full picture. Even when you're older you're constantly build a bigger and greater picture, one that is never complete until you have all the information that exists about everything. Which simply is not available at this time. But growing up is about using what you know to make your own decisions rather than just following orders. That is what makes the difference between a child and an adult.