Bigger Picture Moments: Mean Girls Revisited

My mom and I had a winding, long conversation about Mean Girls the other day.  While she knew some of the stories I told, she hadn't been privy to all of them, and I could see the hurt on her face as we talked.  She felt like she'd let me down.  Like her reassurance and advice and consider the source, honey and this too, shall pass were all insignificant in the face of such adolescent heartbreak. 

I tried to explain: it wasn't something she could have fixed for me.  It was just, simply, the way life unfolds for some people.  And I suspect that some bit of cruel unfolding happens for more of us than not.  This is how humans operate, by and large, historically and emotionally: we need to feel bigger, better, and more important, which leads us, invariably, to crush those smaller than us under our heels as we stand taller.  We use each other to make ourselves feel more important. 

It is mind-blowingly easy to see now that the mean girls in my past had been used by someone bigger than themselves to augment status or self-importance.  Maybe an older sibling was hateful to them.  Maybe a trusted adult.  Maybe a group of self-conscious peers.  Whatever: they were made to feel small at some point and the only way they could, in their immaturity, find to grow stronger again was to repeat the cycle. 

Even I did it.  Knowing how badly it hurt to be hurt, I reciprocated in kind when I found someone who would fit easily under my heel.  I remember one sweet, slow girl...I'm too ashamed to spell it all out right now, but it happened.  Something I said made her face fall.  I can still see, exactly, the confusion when she creased her brow.  It was a first and a last for me, but I can never take it back.

I didn't have to explain to my mom how the meanness felt.  She knew already.  She was a junior high student once, too.  But more than that mere common denominator, she also had to wear a full-body cast for scoliosis.  She gets it.  Like I said, I don't believe many of us were immune to cruelty.

But what I tried to show her was that all of her words, her assurance and promises of character, they made a difference.

I might not have said the same thing when I was twelve.  I might have said, Thanks mom, but those words won't help the blaze recede from my face when a room full of 7th graders is laughing at me. 

Because her words weren't meant to make the meanness stop.  They were meant to bolster and enliven me over seasons and stages and years.  I doubt that even she knew her words were meant for the long-term.  (But maybe she did; she IS very wise.)  Her words did something better than solve the hurt-feelings problem at-hand. 

They burrowed deep into a secret shell and blossomed into truth that burned like fire in my self.  An unnoticed fire, a smolder, perhaps, but fire at any rate. 

The words -- the fire -- kept me. 

Though I was embarrassed about it, I still played the violin in the orchestra because I loved it.  Though I understood my habit of talking too much at awkward moments to be condemning, I didn't shut myself up because I had to speak.  Though I realized some of my friends would never catapult me into the cool crowd, I didn't abandon ship because they were my friends.  

What I mean is that my mom's words built themselves up like a shield around the person I was about to become.  Protecting me so I wouldn't forget who I was and what I loved about myself.

And today, I know who I am.  I am good.  I am worthwhile.  I am easily embarrassed.  I am compassionate.  I am awkward.  I am loved.  The mean girls didn't get the best of me, though I was sure at the time that they had.  Due in great measure to what my mother told me about myself and my worth,  I believe I got the best of me in the end.

I don't know what the mean girls got, if anything.  I kind of feel sorry for them.

So my daughters will enter this world of cruelty.  It's going to happen.  I fear it.  I won't know how to make it better.  I will speak words of encouragement and worth (and probably anger at the meanness of others) and it may fall on deaf, devastated ears.

But....

my words will burrow deep, blossoming someday into truth that burns like fire in their hearts. 

I'm no angel.  I just play one with crayons.

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