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The Truth About Me and My Not-So-Typical Best Friend

This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Waseda chapter.

I made a new friend when I was eight. My teacher introduced her to me one day when she called me a stupid child for something that was in hindsight, a small mistake any eight year old would make, like faltering because I couldn’t remember what 3 times 7 was or something silly like that. The friend I made that day has been with me ever since. 

She wasn’t a terribly good friend as a child; she was the obnoxious kid that rode on your back, pulling at your face with her grubby little hands in a death grip so that no matter what you did, you just couldn’t shake her off. She would sit at the foot of my bed while I tried to fall asleep, saying stuff like “Maybe if you weren’t such a stupid kid, your parents would love you more,” and when I sat alone in class, she would be there telling me how people didn’t want to talk to me because I was fat and ugly. 

via Unsplash

Because I spent so much time with her- we practically grew up together-, I didn’t mind her presence so much anymore because at some point I figured the things she told me must be right. Throughout Junior High, I walked through hallways staring at my feet because she told me I was chubby and nobody in their right mind would bother talking to me; and she was right because hardly anyone did. She laughed at me whenever I played a wrong note and my violin screeched. She told me boys wouldn’t like me, because I was just so damn plain. Every story I wrote for a while was balled up and binned, because she would tell me my words were stupid and pathetic and that I should just stop. For decades I played it safe, took no risks, because she stopped me from making a fool of myself; if I didn’t put anything out into the world, I would be laughed at by only her and nobody else. 

via Unsplash

I believed every word she said to me; because for a while, nobody ever told me otherwise. She was the voice in my ear whispering “He’s lying,” when a boy told me I was pretty for the first time. She sabotaged my relationships because unlike me she questioned everything- “What if he’s lying about going out with the boys tonight?” or “What if she’s more than a friend?” She made sure I worried about the tiniest things, and she would have me fully convinced he didn’t love me if he hadn’t replied in 2 hours. 

I couldn’t just tell her to shut up. After all, she was and still is my friend; we grew up together. It’s hard to tell her she’s wrong because it feels like she had been right all this time. But some days, I find the strength to ignore her and she leaves me alone for a little while. Then she comes back and tells me, “That thing you wrote is suuuuper dumb. I hope you’re not planning on posting it.” I shrug and say, “So what if it is? I’m gonna do it anyway.” 

Winnie is a 20-something university student who is not as amusing as she thinks she is.  When not reading or writing, you can find her in various indoor establishments knitting (a.k.a stitching and bitching), journaling, and participating in other grandmother-like activities.