I am going to start with one of the two stories about the friendships that I had and I lost; and I'm going to start with the one that is the oldest (also because the other one seems to be getting better :) so I don't want to talk badly about that.)
So I knew this girl - let's call her Katherine - right from my school days and I NEVER liked her. All throughout my school life she had been nothing but a pain, not only to me, also to quite a few people in our grade. She thought a little too much about herself than others would approve of and that led to ego clashes between her and a few other people. The fact that she used to top the class, didn't help her cause at all.
Back in those days, I wasn't a very nice person either. I am still not the best, but I've overcome most of my flaws as a person and I've tried my best to not go back to the person I used to be. I was blunt, straightforward, rude and didn't give a shit about what anyone said or how they would feel once I said something that may hurt them. It didn't take long for me to pick up a fight. I didn't make jokes about other people or mess with them, so my rule was 'I won't mess with you and I won't take shit from you either!' As a result of this, I didn't have many friends - actually, I just had one (who was a weird character in herself. More about her after this story.)
Even the one friend that I had - Alice, didn't care much about the way I was and never suggested that I should change myself if I wanted people to like me (this is what a friend should have done) because she apparently was torn between choosing between Heather and me (and thankfully, I wasn't the one putting her in that position!) When I was in the eighth grade, I met Naomi and she sort of had an effect on me that made me change my self a little bit. But a lot of damage had already been done by then.
As I was saying, Katherine and I never got along and we've even had cat fights in our school days - pulling each others' hair; and we've ignored each other like the other didn't even exist. And it's not as if we weren't fine with it. We were totally okay with the fact of being that way with each other, and we didn't even bother to try to be friends.
Somewhere during the last year of our school, we got stuck in the same class. Now our school had this system of shuffling the students every year. So whenever we finished a year, there was no guarantee that the friends you made in class that year would be with you the next year. So that year when we got stuck in the same class we noticed that there were no girls in the class that we wanted to sit with. I do not want to brag; but even though she used to be the topper, I was a bright student myself - always among the top ten students in the class. And when we saw that the class was filled with only two other girls of our type (academics wise) who were already sitting with each other; that left us no choice but to sit with each other.
By that year, I had mellowed down quite a bit because of Naomi, so I extended my hand towards friendship and she accepted it wholeheartedly, somewhat glad to be stuck with me than some other girl, who cared more about the latest movie, or pop song or her nail polish shade. I guess I was the lesser of two evils for her to make the choice, but both of us were quite content with what we got to settle for.
The first week in class was a little weird because we were never friends and to fill those gaps between one class and the other was a little difficult. Fortunately for me, I make friends very easily and so does she, so the awkwardness didn't last long. But there was still one problem. I had no friends (Alice was in the same class as me but she had turned weirder with each passing year and Naomi was in the other class) and she had quite a few. None of them were in our class though.
Everyday during recess, she ran off to be with them and spend sometime with them, whereas I had nowhere to go or no one to be with. So one day during recess, she asked me if I would go with her to the other class and I said yes. That was the best decision of my life because if I hadn't said yes to her that day, I wouldn't have made friends that even today after almost a decade of finishing school are still my best friends and I speak to quite a few of them, on a daily basis.
...to continue.
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