I am still boiling mad about the terrible tragedy of Megan Meier. She is the young teenage girl who committed suicide after being bullied online by her friend’s MOM. I think it is horrible and I hope that there will be some sort of justice played out here. Even if there is no case brought against the perpetrators, I truly believe in the power of karma and that what you do comes back to you tenfold. I am so mad I can barely write.
This makes me furious because it brings me right back to my own childhood traumas. When I was about 13 – possibly the worst age ever for everyone, especially me – my parents had a falling out with the parents of the girls I believed to be my closest friends, who we will call E and G. E and G’s mom encouraged them not only to stop being my friend, but also to make sure that my life was a living hell. This included a fairly successful campaign of turning all of my church youth group against me, filling my sleeping bag at summer camp with twigs and leaves and dog shit, throwing tanbark at my eyes, and countless other kid crimes and misdemeanors that haven’t healed over time. The pain has just gone underground and now rises up whenever I don’t get a part I really want or a gig goes bad or I read something mean about myself in a magazine.
It was sad because I really loved those girls. We bought our first designer jeans together ($10 at Kmart! Dark rinse! Stretch! Bottoms rolled up because they were miles long! Imagine!), we listened nonstop to Michael Jackson and Shaun Cassidy and Chicago and watched Jodie Foster in “The little girl who lives down the lane.” We laughed and screamed and cried together and I loved them, and when one day, they weren’t my friends anymore, I questioned my thirteen year old sanity. My whole world turned upside-down and I felt so ugly and awful and hated, I didn’t know what to do.
I feel so sad for the little girl I once was and it makes me want to make sure that whenever I see young girls, however big or small or obnoxious or uncute they are, I give them a kind smile and a silent blessing that they are happy inside and grow up good. Children are terrible to each other, but what made this situation worse was that even though E and G happily carried out the plan to ruin my life like weirdly short henchmen or unflying monkeys, it was all because their mother wanted some kind of dumb revenge on my mother. I just don’t know what kind of parents would do such a thing. I think that if you are an adult that all children are your responsibility – whether they are yours are not – whether you like them or not – whether you like their parents or not! Children belong to the world and we should be kind to them all, and care for them all, like they are all precious. They are the most precious thing of all because they are the future.
When I read anything you’ve written I feel like there is another person out there who, even though she chooses to live in California 😉 speaks from the same, joyous, empowered, angry, logical, creative, driven, fabulous place that I do. Reading your writing is like a tight hug, Belgian chocolate covered pretzels, the first time you put your toes in warm sand each summer and funky loving dog breath when they kiss you ecstatically–all wrapped up in one. (I know, list much?)
Thank you thank you thank you.
Damn, this is definitely an Odd Girl Out story! It’s bad enough that online bullying goes on between high school/junior high school girls, but it’s even sadder when the parents have to be involved in the bullying. It’s like “How old are they again?” Great post
there were 3 bitches in school who couldn’t stand me because i was dating a really hot foxy david lee roth type dude from the high school. one of those cunts worked in the office and was given the responsibility of reviewing the grades of everyone on the honor roll to see if they qualified for the national honor society. THE BITCH SKIPPED OVER ME becuase of the hot guy (who i was dating by the way due my extraordinary blow job skillz), so i missed out on the ceremony in front of the whole school and my mom didn’t get to take any kodak instamatic photos.
instead, after i complained, i was given a bouquet of half-dead mums and the prinicipal made an announcement over the PA that i was now in the honor society- big fucking whoop! when they took the year end trip, i chose not to waste a day with those bitches and instead my mom took me to the movies, out to lunch and shopping. if it weren’t for the fact the one bitch became a karate instructor, i would totally kick her ass.
so here’s a shout out to her- LA DONNA J.- you suck cocks in HELL and you aren’t even good at it!
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, about whether children or adults are more brutal to eachother. I got nothin’.
We are such a screwed up society – it’s really scary to imagine where the future will take us. I hope to hell that the world can and does change for the better soon! When I was growing up (I’m 48 now) it was all about change, when I was in Jr. High and High School we were told how much better the world would be by the time we were adults. We’ve done a lot of changing in some ways, but certainly not for the better.
Bullying has probably always gone on – but why? Why can’t people understand that being cruel and hurtful are not what we are here for.
I agree with you when it comes to Karma – I wish everyone did, then they may think twice.
Keep up the good work – we love ya! Peace!
As the parent of 4 girls. Three are now in their 20’s and the baby is thirteen)
I can say without a doubt, that some of the meanest people in the world are young girls between the ages of 10-16. No doubt.
Margaret, I went through something very similar to what you described when I was 13. It is hard to understand. I have always been a very caring, tender-hearted person, who would never do anything to hurt another, even back then.
And when these ‘bitches’ did this to me, I was just perplexed. I COULD NOT understand WHY they did this.
So, I made SURE that my daughters would be sensitive to people’s feelings. And they have been. And they each went through some nasty shit when they were ‘tweens’. ( In fact, I am going through some nasty shit at work because of a woman like this, as we speak)
These girls that do this type of thing it is just about ALWAYS because their mothers are like this. It still just makes you want to beat the shit out em’ though, don’t it? heheheh
I just wish I could be there to see their karma!!!!
A few days ago a mother blew up at me because I’d had the unmitigated gall to say something to her daughter. After swearing at me like a sailor, she proceeded to teach the two year old child to swear and gesture obscenely at me.
I’m sure that kid is going to have an *interesting* experience in kindergarden.
Bad kids don’t come from a vacuum.
This story made me really sad too. While none of the mean girls I knew were former friends, I certainly had it hard at that age. In 8th grade, on the first day of PE class, this girl, “M,” just decided that she hated me. No reason. I’d never even seen her before but for the next two years she made it her mission in life to treat me as badly as possible. In 9th grade, we had PE together again and our locker room had a door that was a cage that locked with just a padlock or combo lock that the teacher left hanging there. If I didn’t get dressed quickly enough to be out of there, M would put the lock on and lock me in the room so that I’d have to go out the back door and walk all the way around the school to get back in.
A few years after graduation, I ran into one of M’s friends, “L.” I hadn’t seen her since she moved away sophomore year, but that didn’t stop her from loudly attracting my attention and telling me “I don’t like you.” At that point, I couldn’t have cared less and I pointed that out to her, but it astounded me that some chick from high school was still acting that way so long after the age at which most people grow out of that.
I’m 27 and consider myself to be an interesting, intelligent woman and I (usually) like the way I look. But I still sometimes think other women are saying mean things about me because of the way M and her friends treated me.