Power Struggle

I always thought that friendships you make affect you a lot more in high school than any romantic relationship. Maybe that’s because I had such a profound negative experience with the former, or maybe because I never got to experience the latter at all. But being friends with the wrong people is perhaps the worst thing that ever happened to me. I’m not even talking about, you know, getting involved with a bad group of friends who pressure and influence you to do bad things to the point where you don’t even recognize yourself. I’m talking about friendships where the other person doesn’t do anything wrong, yet they still make you feel so horrible about yourself, so useless and boring. These things come from social status, from your level of popularity, but also from confidence. In high school, I had neither of these things, and maybe that’s why I was so jealous of the person who did. Even if that person was my only friend for arguably the worst two years of my life.

I feel as though I need to explain why I got into a situation where I only had one person to confide in during my sophomore year of high school. Although this part is relevant to the story, I don’t really want to talk about it (obviously because I hated life at that moment, but also because it paints me in a helpless, pathetic light). So I’ll keep this part very brief and straightforward. I grew up in a different country, speaking a different language, but when I was fifteen, we were forced to move to America. When I say we, I mean that I was with my mom and little brother, while my older sister, whom I only started being best friends with, stayed back because she couldn’t get a visa before the lockdown. Long story short, I was thrown into sophomore year of high school with a second-grade level English and no understanding what anything around me was (things were so bad I couldn’t open my locker for two weeks and had to ask the guy next to me, who didn’t seem so trustworthy). I was also notoriously bad at adapting and socializing. I struggled making friends, and I knew that about myself, but I learned that too late into my childhood for me to do something about it. I had friends in my old school, best friends even, who thought I was hilarious and hung out with me all the time. But I never got out of my comfort zone. I was too shy to ask the boys if I could join their soccer match, so I would sit on the sidelines until they noticed and invited me in. I felt too self-conscious making a McDonalds order, like I was a kid trying too hard to play an adult, and the worker at the register would ask where my parents were. I was afraid to approach people at the dance club because I didn’t want to appear clingy and annoying. So in part, maybe the reason why I didn't talk to anyone for half of the school year and sat alone in the cafeteria was the self-fulfilling prophecy. But then, I would watch an American movie about high schoolers, where the new girl was bullied and had to sit in the bathroom stall to eat her lunch, so whenever my parents asked me if I was doing okay, I felt that I had no right to complain.

There was a guy who sat next to me at lunch for a few days. We were in the same group for a civics assignment, and I guess he felt bad about me doing all the work, so he made an effort to get to know me. But at that point, my English was good enough to understand him, but now nearly enough to engage in a productive conversation. I wasn’t pretty, and I wasn’t interesting, so it wasn’t all that surprising when he stopped sitting at my table. He went to an online school shortly afterwards, and I only saw him at graduation practice two and a half years later. At that moment, I wondered if he remembered me the way I remembered him. I wondered if he knew that his attempt at being a nice person made me feel like absolute shit. His face when he asked me questions and I gave him a one syllabus response, when he said “I feel like I’m in an interview,” haunted me for a long time. At night, I often came up with different responses to that statement. “I’m sorry I can’t ask you a question without feeling inadequate and stupid and like you’re making fun of my accent with your friends when I’m gone!” I wanted to scream out, but I was a couple of days late with my comeback. And it wasn’t his fault anyway, I was the problem.

But this story isn’t about him. I actually think that this incident with David (the fact that I remember both his first and last name even though I wasn’t even remotely interested in him and it’s been three years should tell you something) didn’t even affect me all that much and I’m just being dramatic. When I did finally make friends, I would mention it as a joke, aka “there was this guy who sat next to me at lunch but I was too boring so he left.” Although I always framed it like he was interested in me when I knew he wasn’t, I guess I wanted him to be.

There was another brief friendship in between, but it didn’t lead to anything since we never had classes together and only bonded on the fact that we spoke the same language.

But then January rolled around, and I formally entered the new stage of my life. An update: I wasn’t friendless anymore, and I sat with two girls at lunch. That’s where the true beginning of the story is, where the power struggle that shaped the entirety of my high school experience began.

Melanie and Stacy were a year older than me, but it wasn’t the only thing they shared. They were both pretty, very smart, and relatively popular (I would say that the fact that our school didn’t have a distinct queen b made me a little disappointed). They weren’t really in the same friend group, but they had the same class after lunch, so they teamed up to sit next to me in the cafeteria. I was aware from the start that they felt bad, that I looked pathetic and depressed sitting alone, but I wasn’t going to tell them to leave me alone. It started with them trying to recruit me into the mock trial which desperately needed people, and after I politely declined, I thought I wouldn’t see them tomorrow. I didn’t really mind, I thought myself numb and unresponsive to the social parts of high school, focusing solely on my classes. I told myself I didn’t need friends and I was above the stupid hierarchy of social power, probably because I was on the bottom of it, therefore didn’t want to acknowledge its existence. But they didn’t leave, and they didn’t tell me that they felt like they were interviewers.

I felt closer to Melanie, maybe because she had less than a thousand instagram followers, but she also looked more sincere, more approachable. She was conventionally more attractive, and I felt that being friends with her, by default, made me more attractive too. But I still loved Stacy. She was more patient with me, sent memes and explained them. Stacy was also funnier and more goofy, and she was freer with throwing phrases like ‘i love you’ and ‘youre so funny’ when we texted, which was something I desperately needed to hear. Yet I still liked Melanie more. Maybe because we had a class together and I simply saw her more often, or maybe because I knew that she had less friends than Stacy, and her talking to me made me feel more special. She never said she loved me and never offered to hang out outside of school, but she did text me sometimes and said that she was glad she sat next to me at lunch. That was marginally making me feel better, but it also put me on edge. Every single lunch period, I was afraid that the awkward silence would get too unbearable or the girls would get tired of explaining their jokes to me. I started going out of my way with my appearance, spending more money on clothes and make up. I thought that being friends with them will make everything better.

But the fact that I started obsessively counting how many lunch periods we had left and stalking their social media pages should have been the first signs that something was wrong. That someone like me, invisible, with zero social connections, could not be friends with popular pretty kids. I compared my clothes, my looks, felt too self-conscious about my lack of followers and friends. Then a cruel part of me started deluding myself into thinking that Melanie and Stacy were taking pity on me and they actually didn’t like me, and then even worse. I thought that I was a part of a social experiment, or some part of their sick joke. I started hyper analyzing our interactions, reread texts, assigned dark meanings to brief looks they shared at our lunch table. I became so solely dependent on what they thought of me that I started to lose myself, and although I cried when the school year ended because I knew our likelihood of having the same class or even lunch period was low, a part of me knew it was perhaps for the best. These friendships made me even more lonely, I hated myself more with each passing second. They were unhealthy and definitely did not make me feel cooler about myself.

I had a job helping my mom with housekeeping at the hotel where we lived, and so I knew I was going to be occupied the whole summer. I texted the girls occasionally (separately, because we didn’t have a groupchat), but the few inside jokes we had exhausted themselves early. After more crying and hating myself, I accepted that I’d probably have to start over my junior year, I’d probably have to sit alone at lunch for a few more months. But I was so terrified of that idea that I clung onto whatever was left of these friendships. The gap between my relationship with Stacy and Melanie began to increase. I liked Melanie more because we had actual deep conversations where we stayed up until late to talk about things that bothered us. I told her something I’ve never told anyone, how I felt so miserable and depressed that summer that I had few suicidal thoughts. Melanie reassured me, and told me that things would get better. I remembered that day because it was the fourth of july. I was out on the dock watching fireworks, feeling relatively okay when I saw a message from her. All she did was check out on me because I wasn’t in touch for a while. Immediately, I felt my mood worsen. I didn’t understand why, I wanted Melanie to text me first, that’s why I haven’t talked to her in a while, but her texting me still ruined the peaceful moment. I went into my room to text her back, and that’s when I spilled everything out. I cried while typing my messages, but her words made me feel a little better. That night, I was so grateful to know her.

Next morning, however, my self-loathing increased. I hated the fact that I overshared so much, that I showed exactly how pathetic and lonely my life was. I hated myself for doing something like this over text, where all of my words stayed forever unless I deleted them. But deleting them would show Melanie that I regretted opening up to her, and the only thing I hated more than myself was hurting other people’s feelings. But I guess my fear of opening up too much that night wasn’t as irrational as I thought, because Melanie started taking longer and longer to answer me. In the middle of July, I knew it was over – she hadn't responded to me for over a month. I cried some more, then went to work and cleaned the rooms and stashed the money and counted days before school started. It was even worse than last year, because now I knew how it felt to gain something and lose it, to grasp the top of that hierarchy by hanging out with the cool girls and then fail miserably, constantly checking my phone to see that I was left on delivered. If I had any sense of self-worth, it plummeted even lower at that point of my life. I started seriously regretting ever meeting these two girls.

But at the end of August, after over a month of silence, Melanie texted me to ask if I had my schedule already. I tried and failed to wait at least a day before answering, but even when I did respond, I still felt angry, humiliated. “No,” I replied. Then I felt that it was rude, so I added “Did you?” The conversation didn’t really continue afterwards, and Melanie just told me to send her my schedule once I did have it. WHY??? I asked myself. Why was she so interested in my life all of a sudden?

My anger and confusion were very short lived, however. Once I saw my schedule and found out that Melanie and I had a lunch period together, I was overjoyed. The idea of being alone again terrified me so much that every other problem or concern became inconsequential. I just needed one friend, I told myself, just one friend and I’ll be okay. Melanie could be that, she is nice, kind, pretty, and smart. If I hang out with her, I’ll put myself out there, and other people will notice me.

But for the person I started becoming once my English got a lot better, once I restored ounces of my confidence, Melanie was the wrong friend. She was perfect, too perfect, and I constantly felt that one wrong joke, one move, and she would slip away. I changed the way I acted, I spent time after school thinking about what we could talk about at lunch. We sat with a few of her other friends, also seniors, but she didn’t talk to them as much, so it was just us. When Melanie asked me to switch into her class, I did. When she asked me to join Mock Trial, I did. When she begged me to take the role of a lawyer on her team so we could be partners, I did. When she asked me for relationship advice when it came to the guy I liked first, I gave it to her. There weren’t many things she would ask me that I would refuse her. We grew closer together, and once her birthday was coming up, I went all out. Money-wise, I couldn’t do anything special, so I settled for a necklace from her favorite jewelry store and ordered a small poster of her favorite singer. But luckily, one has hands, paper, and internet, so anything was possible. I made a bouquet of flowers out of paper, made a heart shaped birthday card, made a box with her favorite colors to put everything inside. I spent hours on it because I knew she liked that kind of attention. And she did, she loved my gift. I was pleased with myself, happier than the person receiving it.

Despite our closeness, it was still the first month of school, so the awkwardness was still there. What was gone, however, were any negative feelings toward her. It’s not that I forgave her for how she abandoned me during summer, but I completely pretended it didn’t happen. I pretended that we were as thick as thieves since January. So when she asked me to go to homecoming, I swallowed my horror at the thought, got a dress, and came in at our discussed time. At this point, I knew that Melanie had three or four girls that she was really close with, but what I didn’t know was that she would arrive with them and meet up with Stacy outside, where all of them would take pictures while waiting in line. My multiple worried texts about Melanie’s whereabouts didn’t come through, but I doubt she would have responded if they did. When I finally saw them come in, after waiting for forty minutes, all of us took one picture together. Neither Stacy nor Melanie ever introduced me to their friends. That was the first time when I realized they might have been embarrassed of me.

The problem about my friendship with Melanie was that she could’ve been ignoring me for 90% of the night, but if she paid me attention for the other 10%, I was convinced she was the saint, the most perfect human being in the world. Right before I left, I danced with her, and she held my hand. When I told her I had to leave, she seemed genuinely disappointed and hugged me tightly. The fact that she ditched me for hours didn’t matter anymore. I was euphoric for the rest of the night.

My mood only brightened when she texted me the next morning, thanking me for coming, even though she “knew I was out of my comfort zone.” I was on the sidelines most of the night and watched her have fun with her best friends, but when I thought of a reply, I told her that I was grateful she made me go and I had such a good time last night. I genuinely meant it at that time, I think.

At this point of the story, it might seem like I was in love with Melanie. I did pick her as my best friend over Stacy because Melanie was slightly prettier. I realize it’s a horrible thing to say about someone, especially your friend, but to me, it was true. But I didn’t want to be with Melanie, I wanted to be Melanie. The more I knew her, the more perfect she appeared. She was popular because she was smart and involved in a lot of clubs, not because she went to parties or was rich and mean. She was a president of the Spanish Honor Society, won the senior superlative for most likely to become the president, volunteered at church and gave speeches in front of 600 people, woke up at 7 am on weekends to help around the house, had a part time job, and wanted to become a lawyer. The last part is important to mention, because even her future was organized and she was confident in it. I didn’t even know what direction to take in college. Boys asked for her number all the time, but she was rarely interested. Oh, and her parents also didn’t speak any English, so she was fluent in Spanish. I didn’t even have my bilingual abilities over her.

I wanted to be Melanie so badly that I absorbed everything she told me: I forced myself to like the music she recommended, I always visited the clothing store she loved, even though I always walked out empty-handed because I couldn’t afford anything. She had a best friend Angela, and even though I knew her name and even met her, she always referred to her as her best friend. “My best friend told me she didn’t think this guy was cute,” or “my best friend bought me this as a gift.” I hated Angela for that precise reason. She had something I wanted: Melanie’s undivided attention. Once Angela called her Mel Mel in an instagram comment, and I burned with jealousy and hatred. She was Mel Mel to her best friends, but she was only Melanie to me. I would never get on the same level of intimacy with her to call her that nickname. But whenever I would say something and Melanie laughed and said that I sounded like Angela, or that her “best friend said the same thing,” I was so pleased with myself. My face read: “see, I can be your best friend too.” Anyway, me and Angela only saw each other three times, and I knew she probably didn’t even know my name. I couldn’t hate her for long.

Besides, I didn’t think I needed to, because Melanie and I kept getting closer. She started driving me home on Fridays because the place she worked at was five minutes away from me, and she had more than two hours before her shift. I was embarrassed for her to see my hotel room, but she was so kind about it that soon I stopped feeling self-conscious. Besides, it wasn’t too bad: the hotel had a pool, a small gym, and an even smaller arcade room. Still they were there, while Melanie’s home was ordinary (not that I ever saw it, she never invited me).While in the car, we would listen to her music and I would grill her into getting Spotify premium.

“You make 15 dollars an hour! The Spotify subscription is what, like 10 bucks? I want to be able to skip songs,” I laughed, and Melanie would hum without looking at me.

“Maybe you’re right, I should get a premium account. I am kind of tired of listening to ads all the time.”

We got milkshakes from a place near school, and I came to think of it as our place, even though we’d only been there three times. I kept the cups from it, as well as other trash like receipts whenever we went somewhere. I started a memory box, but it was more like just a Melanie box. I started to screenshot our conversations, the ones where she sent me a heartwarming video or otherwise said nice things about me. I moved all these screenshots into a folder called FRIENDS. We only had 3 pictures together, so the folder was just the thread of our conversations. Just a little spoiler: I still have the memory box, but I got rid of most Melanie-related stuff. The box is filled with things from my other friends or family outings. But I still have the screenshots, I just can’t bring myself to delete them.

I think that it’s important to add at some point that I made some friends during my junior year. I knew two girls from my history class, and one from physics. I had two friends in English, and a few from different clubs I joined. But again, I felt forced to make friends because I knew for sure that Melanie wouldn’t be here next year. Neither would Stacy. I didn’t want to lose the power that came with being associated with them, and that’s why I never made an effort getting closer to my classmates. They weren’t as cool as Melanie anyway, I told myself, so why would I want to be friends with them?

By the time my birthday rolled around, Melanie and I had been friends for over a year. We often called at random moments, I visited her at work, I went shopping with her, I helped her to pick out her nails for special occasions, I was the first one to find out that a guy she liked asked her to prom, I always talked about her to my family. She informally invited me to her graduation, although she didn’t have the tickets to give them out yet. From the outside, we were typical girl best friends. So when I invited her to have a birthday lunch with us, at the end of March, my parents weren’t surprised. Melanie brought me a cupcake with a single candle. “I don’t know your favorite color, so I got you the blue one.” She didn’t sound sorry or embarrassed about not knowing something I told her before, about the fact that I knew everything she liked and disliked at that point. Only a month prior, I made her a bracelet using her favorite colors, although she only mentioned them once. She got the color right, it was blue, so I ignored a pang of sadness at her words. I blew the candle after I made my wish. I wished we were friends forever.

That was the peak of our friendship, I realize now. In April, Melanie got a boyfriend, and she walked with him on Fridays while I trailed behind, and then we met at her parking spot. I was the one who proposed to hang back so she would have time to talk to Andrew, but I expected her to put up a fight. To say something like “no, you can walk with us. I wanted to introduce you, anyway.” She did say the last part, although I never got to formally meet him. Soon enough, Melanie stopped driving me on Fridays without any warning or explanation. I felt as though she was starting to grow tired of me, and even though I was heartbroken, I reminded her how many days were left before her graduation. “You don’t have to be here for long,” I told her.

When that season arrived, I felt the farthest from Melanie I had felt in months. She went to prom, on a senior trip, dates with Andrew, and grad parties, and none of these things included me. We only saw each other in school, and I realized that once the lunch period was over, I didn’t really cross her mind. I started realizing that since the day I knew her, we never fought or had any type of disagreements, even minor ones. I talked about it with my sister, but she simply told me that maybe Melanie and I were so compatible we didn’t have to disagree. I stopped deluding myself into thinking it was true. The reason why Melanie never disagreed with me was because I never said anything to contradict her. Before giving my opinion, I thought carefully of what she wanted to hear, of what responses could hurt her feelings. And I never disagreed with Melanie because I was too scared to actually speak my mind, afraid that if I don’t give her what she wants, she’ll stop being friends with me. Losing that popularity I gained by being associated with her would completely destroy me, I thought.

There was one time, however, when I felt so mad at her I seriously considered confronting her. As I said, I wasn’t pretty, so receiving attention from guys was a rare and always very awkward occurrence. One time, a guy from our school, Melanie’s classmate actually, complimented my dress in DMs. We started talking, but it appeared to me to be a friendly conversation. So imagine my surprise when he asked me out (to which I obviously refused). I thought Melanie might like the story (she always told me about boys and their advances), so I called her and sent her screenshots of the conversations. I attributed her lack of enthusiasm to it being a Friday night, and told her the story from an anecdotal point of view. It did paint me in a more of a clueless way, although if you were to read the texts alone, it might seem like I was flirting back. Melanie just gave me tips on how to reject guys in a more sneaky way without explicitly saying it, and the incident was forgotten. So it was a bit of an unpleasant surprise when I found out that Melanie showed the screenshots to her boyfriend (whom I’ve never formally met), and perfectly calmly told me that they were role playing and laughing at the whole thing. Something like embarrassment washed over me at the instance. In addition to showing my private messages to someone else, someone I don’t know, without asking me first, I also felt so vulnerable and uncomfortable at the fact how freely Melanie told me about what she did. How often did she do that? How often did she laugh and mock me behind my back, with her boyfriend or Angela or those friends from homecoming that she didn’t bother to introduce me to? It was the first time I saw Melanie as a cruel person.

Unfortunately, I was a coward. I never confronted her. I kept those feelings inside, this growing resentment, but I smiled and hugged her every time she saw me. Power status and looking cool didn’t matter to me anymore, I felt so exhausted I wanted to do something that would force Melanie to stop being friends with me, that would pin the end of our friendship on her. Our calls were less frequent, and I never received a ticket for the graduation. The last day of school for seniors, I cried, but Melanie acted like a mom comforting her child. She wasn’t sad, she was glowing. During senior walk, she sought me out and ran up to me, hugging me really tightly. Was it worth it, I thought as I watched her disappear down the hall. Were two years of high school, a time when you’re supposed to make friends and fall in love and make stupid decisions and unforgettable memories, worth spending on someone who didn’t shed a single tear at the thought that our time was over? Was constant repression of my feelings, constant comparison to her perfection, constant overthinking of our interactions, worth that sense of power and coolness I felt around Melanie?

The answer is no. The social status and popularity that I supposedly gained by being friends with Melanie were an illusion. All the friends I made through her didn’t keep in touch with me after their graduation. No one thought of me as Melanie’s best friend. I didn’t leave any mark in our high school at the time of being friends with her. Maybe because I was so obsessed with the idea of being a perfect friend, of her liking me, that I didn’t achieve anything meaningful at that time. During the summer between my junior and senior year, Melanie invited me to her house, and I met all of her family members. I stayed there for hours and had a lot of fun. A part of me knew it was the end, though, and I noticed that I kind of looked forward to starting the year anew, without her. So when Melanie texted me at the end of the summer that her move-in day was coming up, I only felt slight confusion at the news. She always told me she was commuting to her school, not dorming. But I didn’t feel angry, I didn’t feel spiteful at the thought that Angela probably knew about this change right from the start. When Melanie told me she will live on campus, it was the final nail in the coffin of our friendship. I realized I didn’t want to keep in touch with her anymore, although I didn’t fully realize why.

I started my senior year. To my great relief, not many people remembered Melanie, let alone the fact that I was her friend. Among my classmates, fellow seniors, I was just Amina, my own person, not the extension of somebody bigger and more popular than me. I kind of started secretly hating Melanie, recalling every single instance she mistreated me. I was so focused on the power dynamic between me and Melanie that I didn’t realize I was doing the same thing to my other friends. I deemed myself to be smarter than them, more successful (whatever success meant in high school). I took days to respond to them and rolled my eyes when I saw their caller ID on my screen. I answered unenthusiastically to what they had to say, and didn’t really pay attention whenever they talked. I loved talking about myself though, about the movie I saw last weekend, about a guy I was so sure was hitting on me, about how the teacher was unfair in giving me a low grade. I felt in my zone, effortlessly cool, nonchalant, someone who people wanted to be friends with, to fight for my attention. I relished that feeling, I liked it. It stoked my ego that took so many blows for the past years of being a loser friend, an afterthought, someone on the sidelines. After everything, I became Melanie. And that sudden realization that thankfully happened very early on, is what saved my senior year from being a complete disaster.

Luckily, the funny part was that none of my friends were like me: muppets who agreed with everything I said, desperate for my attention the same way I was desperate for Melanie’s. I didn’t exactly hear phrases like “you weren’t like this last year” or “what happened to you this summer?” but I was put down in my place, reminded that I wasn’t the smartest person in the room. My friends urged me to stop being fake and say what I really thought. We fought and disagreed, were mad at each other and then made up. I said that their music taste was shit, and they told me I was mean sometimes. They remembered my favorite color and when my birthday was without me having to remind it, and I was the same way. I posted goofy pictures of them online and they often tagged me on their photos. There was no power struggle between us, no prettier friend and the DUFF. By the time November rolled around, I felt what a genuine friendship was, something that became almost unfamiliar to me in its two-year absence. I didn’t screenshot their “i love yous” because I didn’t have a fear of having photo evidence of our friendship on file, I didn’t feel defensive to have receipts of our conversations, I didn’t need proof that we were friends. The feelings, the mutual understanding, the level of intimacy and confidence in each other was there, and I wasn’t scared that they would disappear overnight. I was someone’s best friend, loud and proud, and they were mine. It wasn’t an obsession, it was love. Pure, a little crazy at times, platonic love. I spent my senior year with them, and my only regret was not being friends with them sooner. That time was probably the most fun I’ve had in my entire life. I’m in college now, but I FaceTime them every now and then. It’s never awkward, never fake. I don’t think I’ll ever want to stop being friends with them.

I don’t know if the Melanie chapter is already over. I’ve called her a total of three times over my entire senior year, and all of those times our conversations were so forced that I vowed myself not to call her anymore. There is no need to drag out an inevitable. I did see her two or three times during the summer before I had to leave for college, and one of those times she accused me of never calling her. But Melanie’s hold on me was over, so I simply shrugged my shoulders and said something like I’d been busy and promised to call her once I had time. That was in August. I’m writing this in November. Melanie is still waiting for my phone call, although I doubt she remembers me as often as I remember her. I hate that I’m going to be the one blamed for the end of our friendship, but I also think there was no other way. This whole arrangement was so toxic that I think if Melanie kept calling me during my senior year, I would have still considered her my best friend. I had to be the one to break this off, even though I did it in the most cowardly way possible. Maybe one day I’ll call her, for closure, and tell her how I really felt this entire time. Or maybe one day I’ll be brave enough to send her this story. But I’d like to think that nothing will happen. That writing this story for me is the closure, and Melanie doesn’t really need one. I hope that if someone were to ask her what happened to us, she would say that we grew apart. She wasn’t the bad person, after all, she was just the wrong kind of friend. I just wish I realized it sooner.