the most hated girl

Sometimes when I am asleep, and the wind is coming in through the window of my childhood bedroom, I can almost feel you here. For a sleepover, the way we used to do all the time. It was just our clothes then, I didn’t know what was mine or yours. It was our day then, we never left each other’s sides. It was our life then, a pact that if we made it to 40 and were still single, we’d run away together and live on the beach in Mexico.

I always wake up in a sweat from those dreams now.

Now I live in your phone as an unknown cell number, I live in your photos as a girl you used to know. I live in that stain I left on the carpet of your truck when my bubblegum ice cream melted.

Now I’m the most hated girl. For twenty-five years in a row.

If you’ve never been the last choice friend, undiagnosed depression at a very young age, artsy but filled with melancholy girl, then you’ve never been the most hated girl.

But I’ve worn her skin all my life.

At first it was the separate group chat with 9 members, shuffled down from our original group chat with…10 members. Where I found out later I was the only one who wouldn’t be at her birthday. Then I wasn’t at the house parties. Then I wasn’t in other group chats, or group photos, or group trips.

And older still, the most hated girl came to be again when I was single, and the most loved girl thought I wanted her boyfriend.

She didn’t have to say anything to me to remind me: I was the most hated girl. How does the most hated girl go on? After they find her out?

She doesn’t. She stands six inches from the mirror and reminds herself that it’s always been her vs. them. She’s always been the black sheep. She’s never the first choice. She’s hated.

Then she leaves.

She leaves for 3 years and she never ever comes back. Not without her disguise. And she forgets, for a time, that she is hated because the new world she lives in doesn’t know her yet. They don’t know she’s the most hated girl and she will never let them know.

She will never be too needy or unlovable. She will make everyone feel welcome around her. She will be fun and encouraging and hard-working and honest and trustworthy and reliable. She will do things she doesn’t want to do for the sake of keeping the most hated girl quiet. And she will live in disguise everywhere she goes.

And eventually, one small crack opens up and the most hated girl seeps through.

This is the cycle: she loves, she leaks, she lies, she loses, she leaves.

Nobody really knows her. She doesn’t know herself. I certainly don’t know her. I wonder, am I real? Or am I a façade, made up to hide the real me, the most hated girl? Did I manipulate everyone into loving me? Will they find out I’m a fraud?

And in the same breath,

This hated girl wants vindication.

I want to part the seas when I enter the room. I want dead eye contact. I want the truth. I want liberation.

I want 3 good reasons, right now. I want answers. I want proof. I want clarity. I want honesty. I want exoneration. Explanation.

The most hated girl writes, “I want freedom”, but she doesn’t want freedom. She doesn’t want to know why she’s the most hated girl because it’s nothing she hasn’t told herself already. She wants not to care about the why, and that is the hardest journey yet. Harder than being the most hated girl, being the most curious. Being the most loving. Being the most understanding. Being the most critical.

She tears at her skin like a sticker book, hoping to peel off the most hated girl and flick her into the bin. She worries, are we stuck together forever?

She bathes in the things she wants to say, the things she dares not ask, the thoughts that forbid her from sleeping, and she lets it go with the bathwater down the drain.

Poof.

The most hated girl rests again.