Outcasted

It was homecoming 2017, I was so happy-- healthy. Finally, after years of constant struggles, my life was not overcome by darkness; I was sitting with new friends watching a football game, the next night was the homecoming dance and everything was perfect. I was a normal teenage girl, fantasizing about my future and no longer my funeral. There was a lot of fun that night-- but it all blurs together because also on Hoco2k17, the people I once called my best friends turned against me. That part of the night is something I will never forget. A single phrase rings clear from the HOCO game:

"None of us want you here."

I remember my heart stopping in my chest, tears welled in my eyes, as I looked at an old friend of mine who I had once loved. A friend I had laughed with and vented to mere months earlier... What did I do?

I remembered how I left that little group of misfits,way back in January 2017, we huddled together and cried. We promised to stay in contact, promised not to forget each other, so many promises. I remember feeling sick as I left the home I had created during the darkest points of my life. For weeks I wore a Hawaiian necklace gifted to me by one of my "sisters." For months, I sent emails, messaged them, and called their cells. You see the problem with my generation, is that we don't know how to exist without our phones... And when your phone gets taken away-- when your life gets flipped upside down -- you realize who is willing to put effort into a friendship. I never got a reply from any of my old friends. So eventually, I stopped trying to reach out to them, waiting for them to reach out to me instead.

Never a "hello."

Never a "How are you?"

only that last "goodbye."

That hurt.

Yet, flashing forward a few months, I found new friends. friends that didn't stand me up, friends that remembered my birthday, friends that valued me intrinsically. My old group never held me that close, still I loved them.

"None of us want you here."

WHY!? I wanted to scream at my old friend . Why...?

I sat down a few moments later, my spirit shattered. My new, real, friends surrounded me, comforted me, protected me. While the old ones stood four bleachers above us, slandering both my new friends and I. They threatened us indirectly... They tried to get a rise out of us for the remainder of the game... We did our best to ignore them. I went home and fell to pieces on my kitchen floor.

"Why do they hate me so much?" I kept asking. "All I did was find Joy."

and that is exactly why they loathe me so much.

I have healed.

My scars have faded.

I know who I am.

I have changed. ((yes -- for the better))

and my old "friends" despised that change.

The process of healing hurts. The consequences for wrongdoings are painful. There is nothing about a healing journey that is fun. But the results will be forever worth it. However, perhaps the most painful experience I've faced since healing-- would be the rejection from my old groups.

To be the only one happy in a group of wounded people causes deep unrest. I stopped cutting, I overcame depression, I wanted to LIVE, and suddenly -- I had nothing to offer to the people I cherished and held close to my heart, so they got rid of me. Literally.

"None of us want you here."

In the end, after many tears, I'm grateful. My old friends contributed to my life after all. No, not positively -- but I was able to grow up from our co-dependent pain. Leaving me was ,truthfully, the best thing they have ever done for me.

I hope they find their way. I hope they escape their prison cells, but that is all I can do. The rest is up to them. It has to be their choice to change, and, if you are in the same place I was, it has to be yours as well.

Are you reading this right now, in a position where you know a change must occur? Don't fight that feeling. If you want joy- sacrifices have to be made.

"None of us want you here."

When I sat down, directly after these words were said to me -- one of my newer friends hugged me, looked me in the eye and said:

"Well, WE want you here."

Let me encourage you today, like she did, by ensuring you that --