Follower

Fifth grade was a big year for me. It may have been my best year so far, but I don’t want to rule out future possibilities for greatness. Fifth grade was the year we ruled the school, the year before we entered a massive middle school that combined three other elementary schools, where math got infinitely harder and socializing even more so. But that’s all for another post.

While fifth grade may have been the last year of real, child-like fun, it also unofficially marked the beginning of adolescence. Suddenly, crushes were real, and what you said, how you looked, what you did and what you liked were all ripe for criticism and competition. I recall, with vivid awareness, the music my classmates listened to, the shows and movies they watched, the clothes they wore, and the way they talked to one another.

This was 1997. We were listening to the Spice Girls, but it behooved us to have a wider musical curiosity. Time to delve into some rock, grunge, and R&B. Puff Daddy, BSB (if you know, you know), Third Eye Blind, and Shawn Colvin’s “Sunny Came Home” dominated the charts.

Some of these things I remember all the more because I was often the only kid not allowed to participate. Titanic, with its nude drawings and scandalous sex scenes, was forbidden to me, and it seemed at the time, me alone. Dawson’s Creek was absolutely not allowed, though I was allowed to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer. My mother watched an episode of each with me to approve them for viewing.

Unfortunately, the Dawson’s Creek episode featured a high school student having an affair with his English teacher. Meanwhile, Buffy was kicking vampires asses and being a general badass. Luckily mom did not watch the episodes where she had sex with Angel and he turned evil (although it may have been a useful cautionary tale).

My friends back then shopped at the Gap, whose tank tops I was not allowed to wear and whose famous jeans were deemed unnecessarily pricey.

At every sleepover, it seemed all of the girls had a pair of silk pajamas from the Limited Too, except for moi. But my babysitting earnings allowed me to participate in other vital trends, such as the tattoo choker necklaces and the comeback of bell bottoms jeans (suddenly popular again today, 28 years later).

But what really stood out to me in fifth grade was not just the many pop cultural items and tidbits I needed to adopt to save face, but the importance of my own personal “branding.” I will never forget chatting with a group of friends about another girl who we had all decided was a “follower.”

This particular girl, whom we’ll call Janet Morris, had, we surmised, inserted herself into the impenetrable gates of the skinny, rich, popular girls. The audacity of her presence there was mainly due to the fact that she was profoundly normal looking; not at all like the young girls she surrounded herself with. We thought she ought to be one of us, not one of them, and who was she to think she had any right to be over there, at the top of the pyramid?

I assumed Janet had climbed to the top in one of two ways: first, and, in my mind, the most likely, was that she was willing to be at the beck and call of the beautiful people, and would do or say anything to maintain her social status. Obviously they wouldn’t accept her, unless of course, she provided something useful to them, like a friendly servant.

The second possibility was that she had a secret, Machiavellian prowess and was actually in control of the whole group. Being that they were so beautiful, there’d be no reason for them to actually be intelligent. Someone with the right skills and gumption could certainly bend them to her will.

Whatever it was, Janet’s presence in this clique was untenable to me. I couldn’t imagine a world where she was simply and truly friends with these people, and so I looked at her with pity and curiosity. What had she sacrificed to be in their presence? She became a symbol to me of everything I wanted not to be, and in so doing, shaped all of my social goals.

Then and there, I thought to myself, I would never become a follower. I would never become someone’s lackey just to be accepted—no, I, strong and proud, would walk away rather than beg for friendship.

This became my guiding principle, and I thought I was doing a good job of “being myself.” Looking back, though, my paranoia of being a follower led to an obsessive observance of those around me. In order to be “different,” I had to have a firm grasp of what made everyone else “the same,” so that I could avoid it.

Because I feared the superficial, I became superficial. I had to style myself differently, I had to listen to bands “no one had ever heard of,” and buy strange clothes at thrift stores that felt unique but still let me blend into the background; I had to be likeable and uncontroversial… my friendships were light and fun and entirely superficial, I was a person with no real connections. I was so determined to not be anyone’s follower that I “independented” myself right out of any meaningful friendships.

My achievement was paradoxical. Instead of copying one idea of coolness, I simply copied another. Avoiding certain appearances made me obsessed with others. I spent so much time trying not to be things, that I missed out on a great deal of opportunities to have fun, to be lighthearted, to enjoy things just for the sake of them.

The desperation to be seen as I wanted to be seen eventually brought on anxiety and depression and a deep sense of isolation. I didn’t think I fit in anywhere, but looking back on it, that’s what I had cultivated. All of that effort to look effortlessly cool…and I was never cool. I was a hot mess and probably more Machiavellian than Janet ever was.

While walking my dogs today, many years later, I started thinking about Janet. How cruel we were to assume she didn’t belong. How willfully we reinforced stereotypes we’d learned from teen movies and TV shows and magazines; all of which seemed built to remind us that happiness and success belonged only to beautiful people, only to those with the right looks and bodies and social skills. I gobbled those sources up like they were water in a desert, and I regarded them as truth. With my attention and beliefs, I became part of the problem.

I know now that Janet’s place in her friend group could be attributed to a third possibility, one I’d never considered back in 1997. Perhaps Janet fit in just fine, and her friends liked her just as she was. Perhaps they did not care about appearances, perhaps they were not even aware of their own stellar looks, and perhaps they had more going on in their lives than just being cool in fifth grade. Perhaps they were just normal kids, with both problems and privileges, trying to figure it out like everyone else.

And perhaps people like me, who sat back and judged them all as cruel and cold and entitled just because they had things I thought I wanted, who spread gossip about those who didn’t “look” the part, well, I think I was the mean one all along.

And while I hope my insecurity didn’t hurt them, that my assumptions never reached them, looking back, I can definitely see how much it hurt me.

Today, I am mostly unafraid of looking stupid. In my thirties, I have learned many new things I would have been mortified to try as a younger person. I’ve attempted water sports that require being towed by a boat, and failed most of the time; I’ve taken up snowboarding and been pummeled by gravity; I’ve tried English and Western horseback riding and felt keenly how little talent I have for it. I’ve taken on chickens and dogs and home projects, and begun pursuing a masters’ degree in art. I am trying to create a website and finding it punishingly hard.

But I pursue all of these things because they make me happy, because I am learning, slowly, to enjoy learning and let go of the result. This is something I will always be learning. Setting the ego aside is a lifelong pursuit; there is no plateau.

I hope that I can set an example for my fifth grade daughter, who is kinder than I was, and far more confident, to continue to try new things and not care what others think. I hope I can show her that she should talk to people no matter how pretty or unpretty they are, or how cool they seem to be.

I hope she is less afraid than I was of looking or being silly, of awkward moments and not quite fitting in. These things happen, but we can still find our people. We need not bury our heads in the sand simply because we said a stupid thing and alienated a couple people. I’m living proof that you can put your foot in your mouth over and over and people will still be kind to you.

Over the years, I have gotten brave about meeting new people. I have often find the people I instinctively want to hate, the people who I perceive to be too pretty or too successful to be kind, are just as human as I am.

I hope Janet has had a wonderful life, full of friends who love her. I hope fifth grade was a good year for her too, and that she never let the haters bother her.

In spite of the desperate, paranoid kid I once was, things have worked out just fine for me. My fears made me unkind, and critical of myself and others. Those things almost killed me. I fervently hope that I can bring a different energy to the world now, and that I do not pass on those negative traits to my children. But if I do, may I have the heart to forgive them and lead them out of it. Life is not a competition; the world is abundant.

These are the things I pray for, and also, may mom jeans never again go out of style.

By the way, I finally saw Titanic. I have to admit, I didn’t really get what the hype was about. I missed the moment!

But if nothing else, I can be deeply grateful that I have not sunk into freezing waters, at least not literally.