You're Not Special

by Meghan Rienks

  All the friends I had at this time were toxic in their own way, thus making their toxicity much less obvious. If we were all together, I was the butt of the joke. Actually, the only time I wasn’t the butt of the joke was when there wasn’t somebody to justify it with laughter. Everyone gossiped about each other, coaxing rude remarks out of one another to use against them. Once again I was sworn to secrecy, naively thinking that meant nobody was talking about me behind my back. When they started saying things to my face, I didn’t have to speculate about that. Again, this should have been a deal breaker, but I was ready to accept any form of friendship I could get, and they knew that—knew it and milked it. Individually they all made it clear where I stood in relation to them and how I was so lucky that they had given me the opportunity to be graced with their presence. And I ate it up. I took whatever I could get. I truly believed it when they said that if they were mean to me, it meant we were really friends.

  I let them institute a ridiculous set of “rules”; for example, if I appeared with them in public—which seldom happened, I might add—I had to walk six steps behind, speak when spoken to, and oh, so help me God, if I even thought to flirt with a boy… I accepted their lame excuses for why they never invited me to the parties they went to, and I believed them when they said that, despite their ample Instagram presence, their phone had died and, besides, “you wouldn’t have had fun anyway.” I didn’t bat an eye when I was instructed to change my outfit when someone requested to borrow the top off my back or if they just thought it made me look too good. When my phone didn’t ring for days on end, I made up the excuses that they were too lazy to give me. I was a figurative and eventually a literal punching bag. I wish I could say in all of this there was a moment when it all got to be too much and I finally stood up for myself, but I didn’t. Each of these friendships ended on their terms, not my own. I spent months agonizing over why I was left behind and what I could do to get back into their good graces. It pains me to recall a time in which I was so lost and so broken that I accepted scraps of acknowledgment and confused them with love.

  Sadly, the story doesn’t end here; it just gains a new star. Would you believe me if I told you that I have even narrowed it down to only the true crème de la crème of the terrible friends of my past? Because that’s the truth. I’ve always justified shitty things I’ve gone through as material for my book, so at first it was pretty frustrating when I realized I did not have the time or the stamina to go into detail about every bitch from my past. But that’s beside the point; let me get back on track. The good thing about this toxic friend is that she was the last one. And I’m not even going to add any sort of ominous “for now” to that, because she is, without a doubt, the last one. Seriously. I broke the cycle with her and now all my friends are great and I don’t need or want any more friends. Unless Ina Garten wants to hang out. Or Michelle Obama.

  Thankfully, for the first time, I wasn’t nearly as blind and naive as I had been before. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I was as jaded as people claim I am now, but I was somewhere in that ballpark. I had been burned by nearly every friend I had made in LA. After putting my trust in the wrong people time after time, I finally just stopped searching for Southern California versions of my childhood friends. So although this particular friend was the most toxic of them all, she (thankfully) didn’t affect me the same way. There is no real nice way to put it, but to be frank, at the time I knew her, she was just, to me, a bad person.

  She was insanely moody. She’d go from laughing hysterically to slamming doors and screaming at the top of her lungs. She was possessive to a point of codependency where if I did not accompany her for all my waking moments, she’d throw a tantrum. In one specific instance, I was three weeks into a three-month-long shoot. One evening, when I told her I didn’t want to go to the grocery store, since I had food at home and I had work to do, she lost it. She screamed at me that she had let me go to work all day and she waited for me and now it was time for me to do something for her. Maybe a few years ago this would have worked on me, but at that point I was pretty well versed in this kind of behavior. I just rolled my eyes and let her scream it out.

  We spent nearly every waking moment together, mostly at her request, which I’m sure eventually got to her as her frustration grew with my “lack of effort” in the friendship—which, I’ll admit, was somewhat true. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I was an inactive participant, but as time went on and she treated me worse and worse, I fought less and less to please her. She was perpetually negative and critical of every aspect of my life. She hated my boyfriend, my other friends, and every other thing she could find. She’d go out of her way to say rude things to me loudly in public, and even on lazy nights in she’d attempt to put me down in any way she could. Again, I was pretty unfazed by this, which I think just irked her even more.

  When her verbal commentary didn’t get the reactions she wanted, she’d smack my arm with enough force to hurt, rather than just get my attention. Everywhere we went, she would play goalie to my every move: stepping in front of me, bumping shoulders, nudging me from behind, constantly ignoring any sense of personal boundaries. Instead of succumbing to her controlling tendencies, I called her out on it. In doing so, I was now the bad guy. She claimed I was overreacting and that I couldn’t take a joke. She chalked it up to her favorite insult, my “sensitivity,” accompanied by a lengthy eye roll. If not wanting my friend to push me “playfully” made me sensitive, then fuck it. I guess I’m starring in Inside Out 2.

  I was checked out of our “friendship” for a really long time. Considering I had kept her at arm’s length since we first met, that transition was pretty smooth. Despite my ample experience with these telenovela-like friendships, I myself am the least dramatic person when it comes to relationships. And I’m just really lazy. I had no intentions or plans to “dump” her as a friend—not because I wanted to be her friend, or because it sounded like it would be a lot of work on my end (which it did), but it just seemed so silly to me. I think if you treat something like a big deal, that makes it a big deal. Why on earth go through the dramatics of an epic blowup when I knew it would meet its maker on its own? Which it did. It happened on my twenty-second birthday. I had invited her to Disneyland during the day, drinks that night, and Vegas the following weekend. She stood me up at Disneyland, was a no-show at drinks, and neglected to wish me a happy birthday. I heard from her days later with a bitchy text about how I should have wanted to spend my birthday with only her and how she refused to be one of my “many” friends. I was to be only her friend or she would be forced to walk away. As you can imagine, I let her walk away. Took me far too many tries, but at least I learned my lesson.

  As I look back on this chapter, there is a part of me that is so disappointed and embarrassed by that blind and pathetic doormat of a person I was. But there is a bigger part of me that remembers that feeling of worthlessness, desperation, and loneliness as if it were yesterday. Even though I came out better for it, if I had a Time-Turner necklace or that thing from Clockstoppers, I would 100 percent utilize it. But because (as far as I know) the Apple Watch has yet to introduce that feature, I’ll instead opt for a much more rewarding (vom) act. In channeling my experience with unhealthy friendships, I’ve compiled a list that can hopefully help you break any cycle like the one I was stuck in for so long. I present to you a list of red flags and warning signs that your friendship is about as toxic as Febrezing with asbestos:

  20 Red Flags and Warning Signs That Your Friendship Is Toxic (in No Particular Order)

  1. Jokes are consistently made at your expense, without your consent.

  2. There are certain “rules,” spoken or otherwise, that you know to abide by.

  3. You are not allowed other friends, or are only allowed a select few.

  4. You are held to a different standard than they are.

  5. You are the target of insults, hateful words, or other jabs.

  6. You are expected to be at t
heir beck and call, with no reciprocation.

  7. They go out of their way to embarrass you or make you feel less than they are.

  8. They acknowledge your friendship only when it is convenient to them.

  9. The way they treat you in public differs from in private.

  10. They treat you differently, depending on their audience.

  11. They won’t be seen or associated with you in public.

  12. They hide you from their other friends or they segregate you.

  13. They talk about you behind your back but deny it to your face.

  14. They blame you for their shortcomings and point the finger at you for their faults.

  15. They make you work for their friendship.

  16. They detest seeing you happy and will do anything in their power to stop it.

  17. They make negative comments about you.

  18. They make you do things you are uncomfortable with.

  19. They make you question your character, your own morals, and your self-worth.

  20. They are physical without your consent.

  chapter 9 bullies should dress like cruella de vil… or scar

  My family didn’t have cable TV growing up. Not in the, like, “We all slept on a single mattress like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” kind of way. More like my mother was convinced that watching The Powerpuff Girls would ignite some underlying serial killer gene and turn me into a violent, cartoonish fighting machine. (I really wish I was kidding.) She also convinced me that the radiation in the microwave would shoot out and kill me if I stood near it while it was on. Up until I was about sixteen, I’d sprint out of the kitchen and hide behind the couch while my popcorn popped. My mother is an erratic combination of research analyst and drama queen, so, needless to say, she kept me on my toes.

  We had the most basic of all basic TV packages: the local news, PBS, and by some strike of luck a channel that exclusively played reruns of crime shows. I remember sneaking behind my mom’s back to watch Criminal Minds with my dad. (It’s a vastly underrated show, by the way.) I have this distinct memory of sitting on the couch with my father as he briefed me long and hard about the potential content of the show we were about to watch: “It’ll get violent” and “It might get bloody” and “Are you sure you can handle this? I don’t want you to get nightmares.” There was a sensation of rebellion running through my veins the first Thursday when my mom had a meeting and my dad finally caved, letting me watch Special Agent Hotchner and Dr. Reid (swoon). They dove into the minds of sociopaths who drugged and dressed up their victims like dolls and made them have tea parties. I was hooked. I don’t know what caused more of an adrenaline rush: the hot Behavioral Analysis Unit agents (Derek Morgan can get it) or that I knew I was watching something my mother had forbidden and deemed dangerous, something my young eyes needed protecting from.

  Growing up, we are taught to be afraid of kidnappers, guys who drive unmarked white vans offering candy, and the serial killers plaguing the lives of my beloved fictitious Criminal Minds characters. We are not taught to be afraid of our peers, cliques of girls, or nineteen-year-olds who look like they could grace the cover of an American Eagle catalog. At twenty-six years old I can sit alone in my empty apartment and binge-watch hours of every mentally twisted crime show known to man and Netflix, and then promptly turn off all the lights and fall asleep. But put me in a room full of bubbly sorority girls? I’m quivering with PTSD in my Sam Edelman booties.

  Aside from the few natural hiccups of being thirteen and reading the Clique books one too many times (I’m still placing the blame for my bitchy streak on Massie Block), my childhood was more or less bully-free. I mean, a kid named Drew in my fifth-grade class discovered the silent h in my name that my father had added in tribute to his Irish heritage. This gave birth to the nickname of “Megham,” highlighting my chubby appearance at age ten. But that was pretty much the extent of it.

  I did not have the traditional American high school experience. Our football team was a joke, cheerleading was for social pariahs, and when one of my guy friends came out as gay, he got more prom invitations than the entire Duggar family. Composting was “cool,” as was volunteering on weekends and being passionate about nerdy things like Harry Potter. (This one not so much, but it’s wishful thinking from my fanfic days.) We played hacky-sack on the quad barefoot, singing “Kumbaya” and holding hands with flowers in our hair. (That last part is a joke… sort of.)

  I took for granted growing up in a town where quirkiness and individuality were celebrated. I watched shows like The Secret Life of the American Teenager and laughed at their vast “misinterpretation” of high school social conduct. Now, I wasn’t totally out of touch with what growing up outside hippie-land was like. I went to summer camp. (Side note to parents: Summer camp is where your kid learns all the bad stuff, will inevitably have their first kiss, and then some. Just a friendly warning!) Unlike my “cool” Jewish friends who spent their summers in canoes making friendship bracelets, I attended theater camps with kids who could only be themselves two weeks out of the year. They spent the rest of their collegiate days deepening their voices and unpinning Michael J. Fox key chains from their JanSport backpacks in attempts to stand a little straighter. I thought I had dodged a bullet. I silently thanked my father for finding this tiny little town where social norms went to die. I continued my blissfully drama-free life, never once pausing to think that maybe the train was just a little late coming.

  I was nineteen years old when the shit hit the fan. I still hate using the word “bullied.” Try saying “bully” without sounding like a whining seven-year-old. It’s hard. Bullying seems like something that is reserved for preteen girls with body glitter and snappy comebacks they got from Judy Blume books. Nobody will sit with Suzie because Timmy and the other boys say she has cooties! For some reason we’ve rationalized that “kids can be mean” because they’ll just naturally grow out of it. Like, the second you turn eighteen, a switch flips in your head and suddenly your morals are crystal clear and your intentions are spun out of pure gold. I call bullshit. Bullies do not only exist in high school, middle school classrooms, or elementary school. Bullies come in every shape and at any time. The sooner we start acknowledging that fact, the better equipped we’ll be to handle it.

  I think a common misconception is that bullies are always your archenemies, villains like Georgina Sparks who you can sense from a mile away. They’re the popular kids at school who thrive off throwing you into your locker and writing nasty things about you on the bathroom stalls. We’re taught that it’s easy to spot a bully, as if it’s as obvious as night and day, but sometimes bullies can take the form of boyfriends and friends and even the sweetest-looking of girls. Sometimes you don’t even know when it’s happening to you. It took me a while to admit I was being bullied. For some reason, admitting it left a bad taste in my mouth. I felt as if saying those words not only made it true but also made me weak. Who gets bullied at nineteen years old? It sounds preposterous. It sounds childish and outdated and something that must have happened only to me. And that’s what I thought. I convinced myself that I had to be a fluke, the exception to the rule. It wasn’t until I finally talked about it that I realized I was not.

  My bullies came in the form of my two college best friends: sorority girls that I had pledged to be “sisters for life” with. We were inseparable from the first week of our freshman year. You couldn’t find one of us without the other, and our classmates even dubbed us the “Barbies.” We spent every waking moment together, we dated guys in the same fraternities, and we coordinated Halloween costumes. We talked about where we’d end up postgraduation and how we’d be sisters forever and ever and ever. (Gag me.) After a strangely distant summer, we reunited in our new apartment, where it became abundantly clear to me that our trio was now a twosome and I was the odd one out. It began with paying rent: they said it was my responsibility to cover way more than my share of the rent each month because they said that they had
measured the rooms and mine was much larger than theirs, though it was only bigger by a few square feet. I couldn’t wrap my head around what they were saying. The lease we had signed for the three-bedroom apartment was apparently relying on the assumption that I would pay hundreds of dollars more than each of them for the biggest room, but it was hardly bigger at all. I had expected to pay maybe fifty or a hundred dollars more, not basically half the rent of the entire apartment. My parents were flabbergasted. My mother spent the next two weeks on the phone with my roommates’ fathers, until I finally caved. I agreed to pay thousands of dollars a month just so I could live with them. I didn’t want anything to change. I could already sense them drifting away, and I didn’t want to lose my college best friends. As we moved into the apartment, I held my breath, hoping I dodged a bullet. It was all smiles and small talk while our parents moved us in, but the second the last goodbye was exchanged, everything shifted.

  It started off small. They’d “forget” to invite me to their dinner plans; it “slipped their minds” that we were going to carpool to class together. By the end of September they refused to acknowledge my existence. As a kid, when people asked me if I’d rather have the ability to fly or to be invisible, I always said I wanted to be invisible. I wish I could go back in time and tell my childhood self that there is no worse feeling in the world.

  For weeks they ignored my presence, let their eyes glaze over as I walked by, and silently stared off into the distance as I tried to make conversation. I kept telling myself that I was being crazy. I didn’t tell anyone about it. I would show up late to sorority meetings, and my sisters would ask why I didn’t drive with my roommates. I’d make up some excuse that didn’t reveal that they hadn’t spoken to me in weeks. When sisters would compliment my weight loss, I’d thank them, as if crying so hard that I became physically sick was something to be proud of. When my mom called and asked if things had gotten better, I broke down. I bawled on the phone to her about how I was feeling so left out and I couldn’t figure out what I had done wrong. She reassured me that sometimes friends go through rough patches and that, with a little more effort on my end, things would all go back to normal. All I wanted was for things to go back to normal.