The first problem that I have with my grandmother being judgmental came Christmas of 2007.  I entered college in fall of 2006, and during that first spring on campus, I gained about 10 pounds.  This meant that I was heavy when I saw my grandmother the summer of 2007.  By the time Christmas came around, I had lost most of the weight.  My family and I were waiting for my grandmother to get ready for church, when she told me that I “looked skinny” and that it was good “because you were really heavy over the summer.”  Now 10 pounds is not anything extreme but on my 5’1” frame, it was a decent amount.  I accepted and joked with my mother’s side of the family, especially my aunt, about her telling me that.  There are definitely other ways that she could have said something, or she could have just left it as I was looking skinny.

The next situation happened this Christmas, again while we were waiting for my grandmother to get ready for church.  This time she did not make a comment on something, I could control such as my weight but instead my looks.  I do not remember exactly what she said but she made a comment about how I am cute, but as a child, I was “homely.”  I do not know why this bothered me so much but it did.

When did it become ok to say something like that?  It has not.  There is no reason for either of these comments.  I have been going through a period of lower self-esteem (which she could not know) and it hit me hard.  Rarely do I look in the mirror and think that I am pretty, or even cute.  This just hit home, that I am not the only one that thinks this, my own grandmother told me that I was unattractive as a child. 

Then there is the fact that I feel like I am being kicked out of my family.  My sister is having problems with her boyfriend/baby daddy.  So she has been staying with my parents along with her 3 month old son.  This is all great because she has the support that she currently needs but it is leading to some fears on my part.  Over the summer I mentioned to my friend that I felt that my sister would be back in our house within a few months of her son being born.  The biggest fear that I had and still have with this is that I might go home sometime to my room being taken over.  When I was about 15 years old, I got the biggest room of us girls in exchange for a twin bed over the double bed that my older sister got.  I learn that my older sister had spent sometime at the house a few weeks ago, and she slept in my room.  I really do understand, it is biggest room, but the problem is that I am selfish and do not want her in my room.  The annoying part is that my parents know this.

With all of this happening I feel like I have not where to turn.  I don’t want to talk to my parents about my friend problems because they have enough stress and I am slightly angry with them.  I feel that I can’t talk to my friends because I am being petty and immature about the whole room thing, and I feel that they genuinely don ‘t really care about me.  I have no where to turn and it is leading me to be lost.  That is why I write.  I may not be eloquent or use perfect grammar but I now that I can get things out without repercussions.

One of the things that hurts the most is the fact that I tried and continue to try to change things with my friends yet I see no difference.  At what point is trying not enough and should I realize that things are not going to change.

So from here on out, I will live my life if “they” want to be apart of it then great.  As much as I love things to be better but I need to control my own life.

Some background, I am currently enrolled in school that is about 90 minutes from my house, meaning that at any time I know that my parents can make the trip down to see me if need be but also I can make a trip back home to see them.  I am having problems with my friends at school, and I told my mom about it last week and during the conversation she made a comment about how it bothered her that I was losing such a close group of friends.  Now I have no real idea why things are going wrong with people who use to hang out with me but they are.  Everything has been ok for the past week because we were all busy with classes and exams to hang out.  Then tonight I asked the friend that I am closest to if she wanted to hang out tomorrow and she said “I think I am going to pass” yet I overheard her talking today about doing things with the other people.  This killed my spirit of everything getting better.

This leads to the reason I am going to start lying to my parents.  I think I might have to, even though it kills me inside to lose these friends and virtually be alone 90 minutes alone, I do not want my parents to worry about me.  I would rather “deal” with things on my own then know that I am affecting someone else’s life.  I never want to do that.  So here it goes, from this point forward I am going to make my parents believe that I am wonderful and nothing has changed.

I started graduate school last fall and after some time I feel into a group of friends whom I really liked.  Everything was great and we had fun hanging out with each other.  One of the girls that I became close to Erika was always there and I thought was someone I could really count on.  Something to know about her though is that she has a problem with people using her.  She does not want to be friends with someone who is just looking to get things from her.

Recently this school year I went out the group.  Then one Monday I was just not up for hanging out, so I backed out of the plans that we had.  Since then I have not been invited to hang out with them.  I know for a fact that they have been hanging out without me yet I am receiving no invites. To make things better they have been ignoring me completely.  This hurts more than I thought it would because I am repeating the cycle I had in undergrad where I make only a few friends then they decided that I am “not good enough” for them anymore.  I am not left alone, completely alone.   To make things better I am now being ask by Erika if I can give her some notes from one of our classes because I am better at organizing than her.  She has not talked to me in days, yet now she needs something and I am suddenly the person she goes to.

I just do not know where I went wrong and I don’t know how to fix things.  It is obviously me being that I have lost other friends this way before.  I could be my attitude or it could just be that I suck at picking friends.  Either way it does not help with the hurt.

When I got back to school I continued my running and I know that my eating decreased somewhat because I am too lazy to cook full meals for myself.  In the middle of August I when to a fitness assessment because it was a requirement in order to belong to my schools fitness center.  At that appointment the trainer weighed me in at 3 pounds less than what the doctor did.  I was thrilled, I weighed less than I did at 17 and it felt good.

The problem now comes that I am still losing weight and it makes me nervous.   I exercise 6 days a week and I eat healthy, but it seems like the weight is coming off too easily.  I tried for 2 years to lose weight and I just could not.  Since the appointment with the trainer I have lost another 5 pounds.  I am beginning to think that it is getting to be too much without much change in effort.  I saw my sister last week and she said that I looked skinny but a good skinny.  Do I really look good, because right now I am 8 pounds lighter than I was about four months ago and it makes me uneasy.  Is my weight loss coming too easy or is my body just changing and all of the hard work I put into exercising and eating right finally paying off?

The real issue comes is it seems like my high school friends are trying to cling more than ever.  I understand where they are coming from and I still love them very much.  That being said I have had two of them try to hold full length conversations with me this past week alone.  Of the five other girls four of them are back home because they are done with college or finishing up college at a local school, so they are still in the high school mentality that I was a few short months ago.  The other one is at grad school, and I think that she is finding that she is not making the friends like she did in undergrad.

I am not saying that I think that I am better than them, or that I am completely moved on from my high school years but I do not have the time to spend hours talking to them.  I feel like they might get upset with me but when they try to hold conversations on Friday nights with me and I am either studying or out with new friends it is hard.  I just hope that they understand and let me spread my wings a little without getting upset or thinking that they are losing a friend.

Every year any employee of my employer should receive a pay increase of a quarter.  This year I did not receive this increase and I did not object because I was still the highest paid lifeguard after my two bosses.  I was informed at the beginning of the summer that my bosses were engage and they were going to be married on August 6, 2010.  I had no problem with this and I still see their relationship as cute.  As the beginning of summer went by I was being put in charge more often than I expected, but I assumed it was explainable because my bosses still had school to finish up.  The last week of school our big boss, the head of recreation, pulled me aside and said that he would have reconsidered my pay if he knew that I was going to be in charge so much.  My reaction was “well why not now” but I did not want to cause any problems.  Another problem that occurred in this week is one of the other experienced guards made a comment asking why I was at work, when I was scheduled.  He was looking to be put in charge, and he under-minded me the entire day because he was jealous.

Summer continued and I was still being put in charge a few days.  I return to school on Wednesday of this upcoming week so I decided my last day of work was going to be Sunday.  Typically for the lifeguards when you are leaving for the summer the schedule is made so that you go in for morning maintenance and leave early.  Well I am not getting that.  The wedding is today, so I was put in charge Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  I understand the first three days but what gets me is Sunday.  First of all my bosses told our big boss that I was only going to be in charge for the first three days.  Secondly I understand that they are getting married but it also my last weekend in town and being in charge keeps me at the pool through part of the night.  The really frustrating part is that there are four other “full time” guards that work at the pool and I am the only one sacrificing anything for this wedding. One guard is out of town visiting friends, another is in the wedding and the other two…my bosses decided to invite them to the wedding.

So on my last weekend at home for the summer, I am spending most of my time working.  All I am happy about is that in 67 hours I am done with the pool forever.  I am sick of people taking advantage of me and I am so happy that pharmacy school is going to prevent me from working there again.  I have put up with far too much s**t this summer and I can’t wait for it to be over.

I have two outlooks on the situation:

1. I am hurt that I am not being included and I feel like going back to my high school habits.  This would include a status on Facebook that could only be seen as angst.  This in my mind would make my friend feel bad and want to fix it.  The problem is that I know this specific friend would care less about my status.
2. My other option is to do the same thing she is doing to me to her.  In a way show her that she can not mess with this girl.  Though I feel that this would get nothing done and put my friend Karla even more in the middle of things.

The real decision here is that I am going to play like nothing is happening and deal with it for the next week and a half. I just want to be the bigger person in the situation, unfortunately at times I am not mature enough for that.

This brings me to my problem.  A few weeks ago my friend Dana was told that she has Celiac Disease, in which she cannot eat gluten anymore.  I understand that this is difficult to deal with, it would be for me too, but she is making it out to be the worst thing in the world.  She wants all of this pity but sadly, at least from me and another friend, Karla, she is not getting it.  She thinks that she is dying because of this.  I realized that this problem is going to truly be a problem when over the weekend we when out to dinner.  The whole reason to go out was that my friend Karla passed her re-certification for being an EMT.  So naturally, we let Karla chose the restaurant.  She chose a locally owned BBQ place and Dana’s response was “you know that I can’t eat there”.  Well first there was bound to be something that Dana could have had at the restaurant secondly we decided that we would go out for ice cream after dinner so that Dana could go.  Well we let my other friend Susan chose the ice cream place because she could not make dinner due to work.  She chose a place that was near her house to make things easier.  Dana’s response was that she could not eat there either and she went off in a huff through a text message.

Monday it got worst.  Susan’s birthday was on Monday, and her parents had gone out of town so Susan had to run her family restaurant.  Being the friends that we are, we went down to visit her.  I decided that I would make cupcakes for her and being the thoughtful friend that I am I bought gluten free cake mix so that Dana could have some.  She was out of town and could not make the impromptu party so I told her that I would save the mix for a time that she was around so that she could enjoy it.  Her response to that was “that stuff taste like crap and I would not wish that on any of you to eat it”.  Now I understand that she thanked me for buying the mix, but did she have to say that it tasted like crap?  No she did not it was unnecessary.  If she keeps this up trying to get a pity party, it is going to be a very long summer but at least I have Karla on my side about how Dana is overreacting.