“I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even if we don't have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
I have been very reserved from my childhood. In a family of four, I still cannot relate to the patriarch, or my highly extroverted mother and sister. I always cried in school as a kid – something that no other child within the extended family has ever done before or after me. So, you could say that’s where the seeds of my wallflower personality got planted.
Primary/middle school:
Things were emotionally quite smooth for me from second to fifth grade. I liked my teachers and classmates. I only started feeling a little left out from grade 6. I went to an all-girls school - the disproportionate ratio of females and males in our school premises only made things worse. I wasn’t enjoying the change that I was seeing in our conversations. I didn’t like talking about boys, puberty, or sex and I started to slowly drift away from the girls in my class and found my solace in studies. It was around this time that I met my best friend who made me feel okay with not belonging because she didn’t either. 12 years of this friendship, and we still are the proud nerds we used to be.
High school:
High school was very tough for me. I had to move to a new country with half my family, leaving the only house I’ve ever called home. I was 15 - an extremely impressionable age especially for a sensitive kid like me. The first high school I attended for two months was a horror story - I was the tallest and probably oldest in class. I had boys in the classroom for the first time in my life and even though their gender didn’t make me uncomfortable, their attitudes did. Most of them were bullies and I absolutely hated going to school. My attendance was low, I cried every morning when I had to go to school and even cried when I was there which obviously did not help my social situation. I was back to being the kid who cries just like in my kindergarten days.
Two months later, I was in a different school which felt better because of their focus on academics. I got the space to find solace in my studies again and it was the only taste of familiarity I’ve had in months. Socially, it was 5 years of extreme loneliness that I’m still trying to recover from. This school was quite an elite one with most kids having foreign passports and privileged backgrounds. There was no school uniform which gave the mean kids a chance to comment on my clothes. The Bengali kids never spoke Bangla even though the city we lived in spoke that language. People were mostly busy dating, gossiping, and having extravagant pool parties on birthdays which I was never invited to. It hurt to be not invited but it felt even worse to attend the 1 or 2 parties that I got invited to. I did not emotionally, socially, or economically belong there, so I remained the quiet nerd of my class.
While I was going through all this, my best friend also changed schools, but, in her case, she finally found a place where she belongs. She made some amazing, genuine friends while my social insecurities kept growing their roots deeper and deeper. People in my school started noticing me after I got good grades in my GCE O’Levels and would often be nice to me for the lecture notes or homework. I was quite immune to their personalities by now, so I played along because I didn’t really have anything to lose by helping them.
It was around this time that I started taking French classes outside my school which saved me from the misery that I was living. I had non-judgmental classmates from different age groups, and I was reminded that it was okay to be who I was. They gave me hope that I really needed to get through my last 2 years.
Towards the end of high school, everyone was getting into renowned universities. There were preparations for prom and graduation. Prom was something I knew I wasn’t going to, what really hurt me was few of the girls that I thought were my close friends decided to go last minute without telling me. I know it's not a big deal, but that incident still bothers me because I felt really betrayed. Graduation was a whole different dramatic event with extreme peer pressure about the ceremony outfit (of course…). I didn’t let my parents take their camera to the graduation ceremony because I was afraid others would make disrespectful comments about them (it has happened before, and I was extremely conscious and insecure by now). Kids uploaded the ceremony pictures of the whole class on Facebook the next day where I got conveniently cropped. I didn’t go to the after-party because I didn’t like anyone enough to want to spend more time with them. It hurt but I was very close to getting out of the school and the country, so I focused on that. I didn’t announce my university offer to my classmates while I watched the popular kids being celebrated for their achievements. The school authorities knew but the website didn’t have my university in their “Class of 2015 University placements” list even though many other universities with much lower ranks made it to the list.
University:
I came to university with an open mind while carrying a deep void of friendship in my heart. I wasn’t needy and especially after my emotionally draining high school experience, I never forced social connections. I realized the isolation in high school made me really love my own company and I did not have the space for people who didn’t make me feel 100% comfortable. I’ve made some good friends and great memories in university that I’ll always be grateful for. I’ve also found a few gems who restored my faith in human connections and helped me lighten the emotional baggage I’ve been carrying from high school.
Professional life:
Being out of university, I don’t see my friends as often. We’re almost real adults now, trying to organize our lives. In the last year or so, I’ve started to feel disconnected again. It's an extremely familiar feeling and maybe it has a lot more to do with my insecurities than it has to do with my friends. Female friendships feel a lot more complex than male ones for me and it's probably because female friends are all I had for most of my life. I’ve never had typical girly friendships– it’s always been those 1 or 2 exclusive equations with people who have similar personalities and made me feel comfortable around them.
With all my social insecurities piling up through high school and resurfacing every now and then, my goal has been to really be kind to myself. I don’t feel like I belong and I’m still trying to accept that I never will. I often ask myself “Why am I like this” when I see friendships that seem very Instagram-worthy. But I know that it's illogical to be envious of other people’s equations which wouldn't be emotionally fulfilling for me. Social media does that to us - passively injecting FOMO and feeding on our insecurities. This is why I filter my friend/followers list every few months. I keep myself away from people who like to make a show out of their personal relationships, achievements and portray something that they are not. I have zero space for that in my real and virtual life. There is still a long way to go but choosing quality over quantity when it comes to social connections has really helped me become a wiser, kinder, and less superficial version of myself. And, on most days, this wallflower really likes who she is.
