Monday, July 26, 2010

Frenemies

Dear Bloggie,

      I’m reading this book called Boys, Girls, & Other Hazardous Materials by Rosalind Wiseman – the author of Queen Bees & Wannbes, the basis for one of my favorite movies ever, Mean Girls.

blog pic, boys, girls, and other hazardous materials

      Obviously, when I saw her book on Meg Cabot's blog I needed to get it. I mean, a book written by the author of the basis of Mean Girls is already a good enough reason to buy it. But add in the fact the woman I basically consider the American queen of teen books (Judy Blume having passed down the crown and Louise Rennison being the queen of teen in England) having recommended it, makes it impossible for me not to. But I’m not done!

      On top of all that, Tina Fey, one of my three favorite comedians (the other two being Chelsea Handler and Amy Poehler) praised the book and gave it a quote – the words on the notebook – which reads:

“You can’t put this book down…or it will talk about you while you’re out of the room.” – Tina Fey

      Well if that isn’t the comedy cherry on my book cake, nothing is!

      But telling you that I’m reading a book isn’t why I’m blogging today. Why I’m blogging is that while I beginning the book, I’m came across a passage that read like this:

     On the other hand, I can be slow to admit the obvious. Painfully slow. That, combined with my other major personal weakness of occasionally having no backbone with my friends meant that I had to get a grip and do two things: First, I finally admitted to myself that my best friends were actually my frenemies. (You know, girls I didn’t trust 100 percent, but for some reason were my closest friends.) Second, when I graduated from eighth last year, I ran at the first opportunity, which in my case took the form of transferring to another high school so I could hopefully meet cool, interesting, nonevil, nonvindictive friends.

             –  Boys, Girls, & Other Hazardous Materials, Rosalind Wiseman

     I can sorta relate to this. Serena and Neena weren’t/aren’t evil, but did/do I fully trust them? Hell no! Do I think they fully trusted me? Again – hell no! But that is nothing new. I would like to say it’s all Neena’s fault, but truthfully I never wholly trusted Serena even before Neena came into the picture. There was always that voice in the back of my mind that asked “Can you really tell her this secret/thought? Is it smart to tell her? Maybe she’ll tell people? She probably will. Why didn’t you keep it to yourself? See, she told! You knew but still you told her! Why? Maybe she’ll be different next time? Just maybe she’ll be just as loyal as you’ve been to her? But it probably won’t happen. Just use the past as an example…”

     This is my thinking pattern when it came to Serena. And a major factor behind the reason why I didn’t tell her that I liked Matthew (previously called Luke, but now I might as well tell you his real name) until eighth grade when all the girls told each other who we like/liked. To be truthful, at the time I had no problem telling all the girls…except for Neena and Serena. Neena because I thought she would tell Serena and Serena because I thought she would tell everyone else. And in the end I was right.

      That’s why we had the third fight. Because following our second fight, during which we made up after talking out what we had done to hurt/ bug the other one – my problem being that she told people my secrets while I never told hers, except once to Cat when I was pissed at Serena, but that was an old secret – she went and told Corey – one of my best guy friends – that I liked Matthew. Yes, I trust Corey(he never told anyone), but the point was she shouldn’t have said anything to anyone. Even Corey.

     But this problem with frenemies is nothing new to me. I had one true best friend when I was little that I could trust with anything – her name is Nicole. Unfortunately I was stupid and wanted to be popular so I ended up brushing her off – though at the age of five/six I didn’t realize I was brushing her off until I was older. Sadly she left after Kindergarten so I never got to apologize and mend the damage. If I had, I truly believe we would have  still been friends to this day. I think I’ve told you all this before, but seeing as it’s my greatest regret, I mention this story a lot.

     Now I didn’t just brush off poor Nicole for anyone. No I brushed her off for Delfina ( a girl who I went to preschool with when I was three and who then moved to Argentina until she Kindergarten, which she came back to the U.S. for ) and Veronica. Both of who never treated me that well. But I turn a blind eye and pretended everything was good. They were my first frenemies.

      I guess that's also why I chose to go to the Art Academy. Not only because it’s my dream school, but also because I won’t know anyone there. As much as that scares me, I want to reinvent myself. I’m going to see if I can get people to call me by my nickname and I’m going to try to be more out going and less bossy. This school will give me that. the only people who will know me will be a couple kids who used to go to SBS, but they are all older than me and didn’t know me that well. Perfect.

     ~Libby

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