Wrong in Times Past

I was a weird, difficult child.
I wasn’t particularly pleasant, I was terrified of everything, I was a bossy, jealous, angry little person that had too much emotion and no idea what to do with it.
In school I used meanness as self-defense, to cover up my extreme insecurity. “I’ll hurt them before they hurt me.” I always thought people were talking about me behind my back. I went into a full blown panic and vomited the first time a boy told me he liked me. My life was an endless stream of self-fulfilling prophecies. I was afraid to be excluded, so I would cause a problem, start a fight with my friends, and find out later I hadn’t been invited to a birthday party…oftentimes because my friends mothers felt that I was confrontational. I was. I am.
By late elementary school, I learned to control myself a little better. The overwhelming emotions were still present, but easier to maintain. I had a ton of friends, although sometimes I look back and wonder why and how.
There was always one girl, one “friend” of mine that I fought with more than anyone else. I could feel her competing with everything I did, instigating, manipulating everyone around us. I was mean, but she was sneaky. I stayed the night at her house on several occasions from the time I was in second grade, and I have bizarre, broken memories of things going on that didn’t feel right. She was much too knowledgeable about adult matters long before she should have been.
We got along in spurts, but mostly we fought about everything. About nothing. If I had been familiar with the term “frienemies” at the time, that’s what I would’ve labeled it.
My first day of middle school, I went to sit with the group of friends that I had been a part of since I was 7 years old…and all but two of them acted like I did not exist. I knew immediately that she had everything to do with it.