Girls Are Vicious

Growing up my mom always told me that girls became vicious in middle school. I made the mistake of not believing her and now here I am, letting you know that is not a lie. Girls do become vicious in middle school and they become like that without a single ounce of remorse.

Welcome to the second post in a series of 10! Welcome to Surviving Middle School! Throughout the next nine posts, I will be writing about my tips and recommendations for how to survive middle school. All of these posts are based off of my experiences only, many of you might not experience this at all or may face a worse extreme. Please be cautious when reading as you may not experience the same situations. I do hope, however, that by reading you can have a good idea of how to survive your middle school years. I wish you luck and hope you enjoy the series! If you haven’t already read Part 1: Surviving Middle School 101, check it out!

1. My Story

2. Social Isolation

Social Isolation: to me, social isolation is defined as the conscious decision to isolate one specific person from a group with malicious intent in mind.

When people isolate you from the group they are hoping to cause you to struggle and blame yourself. In reality, being socially isolated is often due to jealousy. Many girls who are jealous of others will try to make their lives difficult as a way to make themselves feel better about their looks, smarts, etc. In middle school, girls are normally going through puberty and their bodies are starting to change. I have found that girls feel their most insecure during middle school and will take it out on others who they feel have what they desire.

-Check Out other posts-

3. Bullying

According to statistics, one out of every five students have been bullied (source: https://www.pacer.org/bullying/info/stats.asp). Let that sink in. So, theoretically speaking, one out of five readers on this blog have been bullied. I am included in that. I was bullied in fourth and fifth grade, you can read the whole story here! To give a shortened version, I was verbally bullied in fourth grade by a former friend and in fifth grade an ex-best friend attacked me in the hallway and left scars on my left forearm. Bullying is extremely common in middle school and even high school, I mean look at the statistics! One in five students. But how do we end it? I mean, yes, there are many organizations that are targeted towards stopping bullying. But how can we, as individuals in a bigger picture, end bullying? There’s the one that we all know by heart: tell a teacher or parent. Yet, many bullied students don’t tell anyone. I often try to put myself in their shoes and attempt to understand why they wouldn’t tell an adult. And I think I finally get it, at least part of it. It can be scary to tell someone that you are getting bullied, or maybe you think that you will get in trouble or the bullying might get worse. We let all these negative what if’s stop us from helping ourselves. But what is this really doing for us? The answer: nothing. We are only hurting ourselves by not telling someone. So I urge you, if you are being bullied, to tell someone. It doesn’t even have to be a parent or teacher, it could be a sibling, best friend, family member. But tell someone that you trust and someone you know will help you.

4. Uncomfortable

Honestly, I don’t know if any of you have had this happen to you or if it will happen but it happened to me all throughout middle school. The other girls in my class would say things or start rumors about me that were so fabricated that I don’t even understand how other people believed it. Thinking back on it now, most of these uncomfortable situations happened in the presence of boys. And it makes me wonder if that was planned, if they were trying to get the boys to dislike me or think I was weird.

Uncomfortable Situations:

I had a “best friend” who would spend time with me when no one else was around and always ditched me whenever we were at school. One day, I was talked with a friend, who is a guy, and she decided to start telling everyone that I was dating him. She knew that I wasn’t comfortable dating boys in middle school and she still told everyone. I confronted her about it and she brushed it off. Later she said I started dating another boy and the entire class would constantly talk about my “two boyfriends.” At one point, my “best friend” created a ship name between the first “boyfriend” and I. She was constantly trying to embarrass me or make me feel uncomfortable around others.

Talking About Body:

Throughout middle school I was always asked about my body. One time, I was told that I was anorexic in front of my crush because I was “too skinny.” On a regular basis, I was asked about what I ate. I remember one time, this “best friend” asked me if I lived off of fruit and if that was the only way I was skinny. All of these questions were asked in the presence of other people and most of the time in front of boys. I would become so uncomfortable and whenever I asked them to stop, they said, “You should be happy you’re so skinny. Not all of us can look like that.” instead of “I’m sorry, Isabel. I can see how that makes you uncomfortable.” It was like a constant game of trying to make me feel uncomfortable or embarrass me in front of boys.

My recommendation if someone is trying to make you feel uncomfortable in front of others is to call them out right there. Tell them that they are wrong and ask why they are trying to fabricate lies. I did this a few times and they turn bright red because they just got caught. Unfortunately, I did this way too late but make sure you do this once people start trying to make you uncomfortable so you can shut it down. And just a thing to think about, nobody can make you feel something. You are the only one who makes yourself feel uncomfortable, angry, sad, etc. Don’t let them take your power, stay happy and positive.

5. Tell Me Why

“Tell me why” is what I asked my mom (pictured above) every day after school. Her best answer was jealousy. None of us can know exactly what is going on in someone else’s head but we can certainly guess. It didn’t make sense to me, why did they hate me so much when I’d never done anything to them. A few of them I’d known for years and when the time came to choose between me or the popular group, they all went to the popular group. Now that I’ve graduated, I’m curious as to if in order to become a true part of the popular group, they have to cut me out of their lives entirely. The reason I ask this is because in my eighth grade year I started to become really good friends with another girl in my class. I won’t disclose exactly what she did for privacy reasons but she completely cut me off and started to act rude towards me. Even now I want to know why, why they hated me. Was it jealousy? Was it truly just pure hatred? I guess we will never know, I mean unless one of the them cares to tell me one day. Hopefully that can happen, my fingers are crossed. If any of you have ever gotten the chance to interview someone who hated your or bullied you, I would love to hear about it! Let me know in the comments or privately under the “Contact” page.

6. Best Friends? I Think Not

Have you ever met that type of person who pretends to be your best friend but really isn’t? Yeah, me too. I’ve met so many of those people in my short lifetime on this planet that I’ve lost count. Middle school is full of those people, or at least mine was.