Bridges to Belonging

Fifth and sixth grade brought friendship with peers into my life. I started to feel like I belonged. I started to feel important.

I'd gone to elementary school with a large group of girls. Learned to make friends with them. We went to each others homes. We had parties. It was fun.

Yet we had moments that signaled the problems to come. More than one of us had leadership abilities. In fifth and sixth grade I could feel the tension between the different girls who wanted to lead. Heck I was one of them, fighting practically invisible battles to be chief.

So off we went to White Mountain Junior High and racing hormones. I don't remember when it started, but early in the first semester Liz decided that she was done with Kim. (I have changed all of their names.)

She, Liz, probably thought she had good reason to exclude Kim from our lunch table. Kim's family was imploding. Divorce, drugged out older siblings, and a total lack of family values were all involved, but Kim herself was salvageable if she'd had friends inviting her to a safe, higher place. Or maybe she would still have run off to be a bar girl.

I tried to convince the group to be kind and make room for her at our lunch table, and the next day I found no room there for me.

Painful doesn't even begin to describe the level of feelings I experienced. I had worked so hard to be kind and keep everyone involved when Liz had tried to take over and run things her way in elementary schools. She'd had mean moments then and few of us had avoided being in her sights. Yet despite the  efforts I'd made for them in the past, none of them went out on a limb to save me and insist that I get a spot at lunch.

I was crushed, and worse I had to figure out how to gracefully find another place to eat each day.

I eventually found a lonely girl, new to the school, who moved after that year. Each day I began eating with her. We spent time at each others homes. She taught me more about black eye liner than I ever needed. And we were friends.

The next semester, my schedule changed and I was now eating third lunch. A whole different group of people was there in the lunch room during the last lunch period.A whole different group who had come from other elementary schools. A whole new group who welcomed me in at lunchtime.

Finally after months of struggling alone, I felt surrounded by friends again. I felt like I belonged.