In grade 9 my group of friends imploded. We’d been excited at our ability to take over student council ( our Jr was 7-9) and high on being the big women on campus. We all went to Lara’s house to get ready for the election , practiced our skits, added glitter to our campaign signs and everything was great for the first few hours.
Then something happened.
The stress of this all was too much for our pubescent bodies and immature psyches.
We cracked.
I am now 32 years old , this was more than half my life ago and I remember it so clearly and still get that pit of my stomach feeling when I think about it. Our circle of friendship shifted so effortlessly into going one by one and saying what we didn’t like about eachother, openly.
I am sure I am not the only one who still carries wounds. It was so honest , too honest and so incredibly hurtful. That moment I decided to find new friends. It was hard these girls were popular, these girls were who I’d hung out with for years and at 14 you don’t just walk away from that. So I started dressing in black, listening to depressing music and focusing on drama, as in plays not teenage drama. I think I managed to push them away, I got weird. They didn’t want weird.
It all worked out in the end, although I can still see Lara’s basement with it’s shag carpet when I feel stug by someone. I am brought back to that instantly when I think girls, or women are focusing on the wrong things. When we go in with the best intentions of working together as a community and end up ripping each other apart.
I don’t think I need to get into the details of this past week - if you are on Twitter you likley saw what I did. And you saw it go very very wrong. Name calling, nasty comments, accusations of being uneducated, of being Nazi’s… the list is horrible and long. Also it came from both sides, so it doesn’t matter what you agree with the general public is left with the thought that mommy bloggers can’t disagree without disolving into my grade 9 sleepover of nastiness and immaturity.
I don’t expect us to all agree. Debate is awesome fuel for change and the world we live in needs a lot of change. I do expect us to keep it civil. Openly state your opinion, link to info that supports your position, write respectful posts, openly state that you boycott a product- but when you go from that to name calling all I do it write you off as unprofessional and I know I am not alone.
I want what I do to be legitimate.
Just today at a charity event hosted by myself and another blogger she mentioned to me that the lack of legitimacy in what we do irks her. Blogs are often brushed off as a hobby of lonely bored housewives looking for drama and even though that is simply not true after a week like this how do we prove that?
So we need to stand up from the shag carpet in Lara’s basement and say in our 32 year old voices something we couldn’t at 14, being mean is not ok. We aren’t a family no one expects us all to love each other, but we are a community and we do need to respect each other.
So well said. I watched the drama but made a clear choice to stay out of it, for many reasons.
You are a class act, Miss Allie.