So.
I have never really been a girls' girl. And I've always tried so hard to be a girls' girl. Why am I not a part of the sisterhood? Why do women always feel so uncomfortable around me? These questions are sort of rhetorical but also not. I would actually like some insight into this so if you have any, please feel free to e-mail me at lindsayoquinn@gmail.com (but of course, you cannot comment on my blog because I don't want any anonymous comments anywhere in my life. Anonymous people don't deserve to be heard. That's why you can't comment... I know it hurts some of you, but you can blame the Anons of the world for this).
ANYWAY.
My struggle with the female race began very early on in life. My best friend growing up was a girl named Jamie (who will love that I mentioned her, I'm sure). And she was always a girls' girl. She made friends so easily (still does) and I always got jealous and tried to convince her to just be mine. She was loyal for a very long time but I just got exhausted constantly having to prove I could be everything to her so that she wouldn't want any other friends (much like how I ruined many relationships with men in my past, actually, come to think of it...). It's not as if I never tried to have girlfriends. But I could never do the hand-clappy games, I could never jump rope. I was also kind of a dirty kid; like running around the neighbourhood in my bare feet kind of kid. Girls always thought I was weird. That really hurt my feelings. And then in elementary school the most popular and pretty girl in the school saw me picking my nose and eating it in the library and that just completely blew my chances of having girlfriends for the next 5 years. Don't judge me, I know you did it as a kid too.
Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned the booger-eating, but whatever.
So I was a lonely little girl, and I used to comb the hair of my troll dolls in a corner on the playground because I just didn't have friends, but wanted to look as if I was too busy to care (which I wasn't doing well at all). And then I got into middle school and instead of bothering with girlfriends, I just started having boyfriends. Everyone told me I shouldn't bother having boyfriends until I was all grown up, but I didn't listen and so I spent almost every day from the age of 12 to 22 having boyfriends. I wonder why boyfriends always came so easy to me while girls remained aliens in my world.
High school proved to be every bit as difficult. Try as I might, I just couldn't relate to most girls. The most popular girls in my grade showed interest in letting me into their circle, and I blew that by trying too hard. I knew I was trying too hard, and tried not to try so hard, ended up making myself look like a total retard and then that was a wash, not surprisingly. I remember one particular time when I repeated something I read in a Cosmo magazine. Something about having to shave your armpits in all directions to really get all the hair, and the beautiful girl with a million friends I told this to just looked at me like I was a 4 year old and said "yeah?"
yeah.
As much as all of this used to bother me, keep me up nights and dreading every monday morning, I think it was good for me. I always had at least a couple of friends, and I've never really been good at nurturing my existing friendships as it was and really couldn't handle anything more, anyway. But as I grew up I slowly developed a sense of self. In between boyfriends and trying to be just like all the girls that I knew and admired most, of course.
But now, at the age of 24, I have finally become my unflinchingly authentic self. I know who I am, who I want to be and who I want to be around. I wish it hadn't taken so long. But it did.
If I could just go back and change anything, I would have just not bothered with all the boyfriends. Ew.
