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Magic Cool Bus

By Gloria Diaz

Check out Gloria's Blog — Edge of Gloria!

Fort Wayne Reader

2018-03-02

I know I’m a bitchy, negative, bitter, cynical person.

But at the same time I sneer at the world, I sometimes wonder what the hell happened. And I think I know what happened now. It’s life. I mean, it IS a four-letter word, right?

My recent musings are a result of me trying to understand where I am, how I got there, and why I’m not doing as well as I’d like. It’s simple. I want to be a kid again. I’m not good at the stupid head games, the schmoozing, the manipulative crap that people do in order to get ahead. Bottom line: I can’t adult.

Up until the end of the summer after sixth grade, things were okay. I’d had the best year of my K-12 schooling. I’d just come back from a three-week trip to Puerto Rico. Then, middle school started. The beginning of the end.

What hurt as much as the bully who hit me over the head with an English workbook were my so-called childhood friends abandoning me. People I had a passing acquaintance with in elementary school hopped on the cool bus and never looked back. A classmate who had been mousy beyond belief suddenly became a cheerleader. I on the other hand, went from feeling relatively normal and happy with my place in the world to being an outcast. That classmate now makes mad money in California, but apparently this person’s family life is messed up. There ARE some things money just can’t buy.

I could understand if I’d gone into middle school bitch-slapping my classmates, tripping them in the lunch room, or yelling racial slurs at them, but I didn’t do any of those things. I was just me, turning from a little kid who would talk to anyone in public, to someone who wasn’t so entertaining anymore. Adults didn’t bully me, so I got along better with them than my peers. But they stopped liking me too. I was one of THEM—a teenager. Problem was, my peers didn’t want to be around me either. It was a bewildering time for me, a very angry time. But I failed at it. If you don’t want to be around your peers because they resent you, it’s hard to learn people skills. Please keep that in mind when the next school shooting occurs. “Oh why, WHY in God’s name did they do this?” They’re angry and they have access to guns. What do you honestly think is going to happen?

I still carry this anger to a certain extent. I got some of this rage off my chest about a year ago when I found out a classmate who had been horrible to me committed suicide. There was an outpouring of grief on our graduating class’s Facebook page. *@!$ this, I thought. I unleashed an epic tirade, calling out this jerk for what he was, and also ripping my classmates a new one. Understandably, it pissed a lot of people off. I probably shouldn’t have said it. But you know what? I’m glad I did. I only regret not stealing a bullhorn at graduation and telling people to go to hell, one middle finger raised high.

Being super-unpopular probably helped me in a lot of ways I’m only realizing now. I never had to worry about getting pregnant in high school, because you can’t get pregnant by having a boy shoot sharpened pencils at you. By not dating, I never learned to be interesting on a date. Being ostracized meant I never had to worry about getting married and divorced, and ending up with kids I couldn’t afford to raise, or an abusive husband. Some of the girls who mocked my unpopularity in high school have multiple marriages, became alcoholics, or both. And it shows.

I found out my brother moved away without telling me. I had to learn from a former neighbor of his. And it was middle school all over again: I tried to be nice, I tried to make him proud of me, tried to make him love me. I spent time with his kids, because I knew they’d be the kids I’d never have. But after mom died, they didn’t like the fact I existed. Like my high school classmates, they resented the fact I was bound to them in some way—either by school or by blood relations. I became uncool within my own family.

I didn’t start out life being this negative. Once upon a time, I was happy and looked forward to the future, and life always had something new to offer: an upcoming birthday, a new school year, holidays, trips, and whatever else I could turn into a purpose in between these other things.

But I realized I wasn’t one of the cool girls. That being nice and hopeful doesn’t really get you anywhere. To my classmates, I got uglier on the outside, which did a number on my inside. And I wasn’t worth their time anymore.

I know that people change and become different as time goes on. However, it screws with your head that suddenly you are not liked because you are YOU. “Be yourself,” I’ve heard, over and over. What if being yourself doesn’t work? Do you get as much cosmetic surgery as possible? Do you become an unpaid actress, projecting an image 24/7 for some non-stop popularity contest even though it feels phonier than a porn star’s implants? Do you “fake it until you make it?”, careening into the world every day pretending the rent and utilities are paid, even though you’ve gotten two disconnection warnings and the landlord is pissed?

I can rest easy knowing that everyone is wallowing in their own bullshit, not admitting anything is wrong, because they want to be on the cool bus. Or, they are on the cool bus, but in spite of the designer clothing and handbags, nice cars, yearly vacations in spite of the economy, they are looking out the window, wanting respite from their exhausting lifestyle, but can’t bear the thought of being different.