Some of them were temporary, but I still remember.
I remember the mundane days filled with joy and all the random activities done:
sleepovers, walks, fun talks, laughter, games,
growing in our youth together.
I remember falling head over heels for boys alongside these girls,
and I remember the ones who remained in my darkest times.
I remember them attempting to rid my insecurities,
I remember feeling like I belonged.
Some of us chased popularity, and the desire to be wanted.
We never got to the top, but we managed to make the climb.
There was this one event, where the popular girls wore plaid tops.
A few weeks after, the rest of the girls followed - including my best friends and I.
Mine was a blue one from Just Jeans.
I remembered wanting that top so so so badly, I begged my mum to buy it for me.
I don't think I wore it much after though,
in fact - I didn't even love it as much I wanted it.
In the first few years of my adolescence, my world revolved around my friends.
My friends and boys; but mainly my friends.
We had the best time ever, I was so sure.
When we reached high-school, many of us dispersed to different colleges.
My main best friend then, managed to be hit by puberty quick and hard.
She gained popularity amongst our seniors in the asian community;
Friendships changed and things shifted.
The friends I made from my pre-teen years were growing up.
They started wearing make-up, they went to parties, they dated,
they smoked, they tried drugs, they clubbed,
the wagged (classes), got on the report card system (when you get too many detentions)
and did all the things teenagers were infamous for.
Although I was in the midst of them, I didn't catch on to the act.
I didn't find the seniors appealing, I didn't think make up was necessary,
I didn't want to go to parties - or get familiar with substances and random sexual activities.
It wasn't because I knew right from wrong,
I supposed I was still held back by my past.
All the things that stole my best friend away, I abhorred.
I just wanted our friendship back,
I wanted to just be with her - without all the additional things.
With time, my other friends became my best-friends.
It was supposedly routine that got us that way.
We had school to thank for it, but we somehow seemed to hate the idea of school.
Speaking of which, when I was a teenager,
school didn't matter - at all.
I don't recall actually studying, or having actual information installed in my brain.
Despite my ignorance and childish self, I managed to pass.
My conversations with my friends consisted of a whole lot of unnecessary gossip.
I was recycling hurtful judgments that only my circle of friends talked about.
We kept to ourselves, and seemed to think less of many around us.
I wouldn't want to deal with my friends and me back then, that's for sure.
I think we secretly knew that many in our year didn't think well of us;
with the company of seniors and the acts that my friends committed,
we achieved negative presumptions and accumulated fake rapports.
Yet, we didn't care. We couldn't look beyond ourselves.
When I was a teenager, I experienced indirect bullying.
It was cyber bullying on a social platform called Formspring.
The anonymous hate comments I got sent me into one of the darkest and most insecure phases I have ever been through. The comments I received didn't only drive my confidence over a cliff,
it drove me to humility - and for that, I wouldn't change it, ever.
There were nights that felt like my heart was stabbed over and over,
and my identity was scribbled and trampled on; my pride ripped to pieces and scattered everywhere..
And the broken pieces, holes and scars mended and left behind became my identity.
Apart from having my heart broken from break up(s), my insecurities and the experience of bullying were one of the two events that formed the basis of where and who I am today.
With the hurt I went through, I was able to see past me.
I saw people, I saw their fragility, I saw the need for love.
Slowly, I built my set of values that I used to make important daily decisions in my life.
Since then, those values and the result of that incident have drove me to making friends that I am able to acknowledge and greet; Good friends that I am able to catch up with and have, even to this very day.
When I was a teenager, the wilderness of finding my identity was a wild adventure.
But I'm so grateful that He is able to turn all things that were bad to good.
I am so very thankful.
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