Throughout all four of my years in college I was often left out. My sorority sisters would go out for someone's birthday and neglected to include me, other friends would take trips that I didn't know about until after the fact, etc. As a general rule I assumed that it was because these things were spur of the moment and really only included those who happened to be present. Living off campus meant I was never around for those spontaneous moments. The rare few times I merited an invitation were a shock to say the least, and naturally I accepted immediately. However, the other times left me feeling unwanted, as though I wasn't worthy of being a member of the group or memorable enough to be included. While I know now that is not true, at the time it very much injured my already low self-esteem.
As time went on I made myself believe it didn't matter, that spending time with those people wasn't actually that much fun and I was better off without it. Sometimes I would conclude, after an invitation was presented, that going hadn't actually been worth my time.
However, now that college is over and I have begun a new job where most of the people I work with are under the age of five I find myself craving someone to spend time with so that I can have a semi-intelligent conversation extending beyond the realm of "Don't eat yet, we haven't said grace, what songs do you know? Twinkle, twinkle little star..." Much to my surprise, a mere week after the college kids moved back into town I received a text begging for my help. This meant an entire evening not spent at home, so I went and had an amazing time. As luck would have it, on my walk up to the college I ran into another old friend who said she missed me and I immediately invited her to join me on a shopping spree where I intended to spend my first paycheck on much needed clothing. In one week I killed two birds with one stone, and that feeling was beyond words after the summer I'd endured.
This brings us to this past weekend. As I said before, I spent most of my four years feeling as though I didn't have a friend in the whole school and during the summer I had no friends at all that live in the area. Stuck in a tiny town with no car, no job, few prospects and no friends, a person can only feel trapped or exceptionally lonely. I felt both. However, over the weekend I received a text ordering me to join a visiting sorority sister at the house to play games. The invitation was a surprise but I was ecstatic to join and to have an excuse to buy a giant bag of Skittles. Once I had arrived and the game was over I reintroduced myself to the friend my sorority sister had brought with her. Asking him if he already knew who I was, he replied that he knew my first name, but was I THAT girl, the one with the amazing last name?
Yes, yes, I replied. That would be me.
Apparently I am a novelty in this guy's world and he asked for my phone number so that he could have my last name in his contacts (I am the only contact without a first name) and he befriended me on myspace and facebook all for the sake of proof that he knew someone with such an amazing last name. While I found this weird and slightly disturbing I was also highly flattered to think that I'm famous to someone. Not only so, but as I was leaving both of them invited me to join them the next day for dinner. Two nights in a row I was relieved of boredom and for once in my life I didn't think about how fat I felt, how broken out my face is, how uninteresting and ordinary I really am. For one weekend I was accepted. For one weekend I was wanted.
Before all of this began I remember praying to God. I prayed that he would help me, that I would find a way to resolve this issue, and his answer to my request was to give me two successive weekends full of fun and interesting things to do.
Of course, this doesn't solve all of my self-esteem problems... but it helps.
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