Welcome to our very first post! We thought the best way to start was to share with you who we are, how we became friends and how over two decades later, we still rock each other's worlds with video calls on the daily!
C: I grew up in a big family and was a pretty happy kid! Unfortunately, I also lived around one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the country, which led to 20% of my childhood traumas! But that will come later on… (gotta keep it juicy!)
After primary school, the law about which schools you could apply to, changed, and I was left with only one option: the ghetto school. And that’s where I met D!
D:I grew up in a small family, around a mile from C but only ever met her when we were allocated to the worst school in the district. Yeah, that was pretty traumatizing on its own. I guess I had, in a way, been shielded from a lot of horrible things that my school peers often experienced. I was 10 the first time I felt depressed, developed anxiety and what I believe were panic attacks over what I went through that school year. I saw a lot of pretty messed up sh*t but through it all I am ever so thankful for C.
C & D:
Picture this: first day after primary school, you’re already super stressed because you don’t know what it is like to go to the “grown ups school”, you don’t have any friends, and you’re going to one of the most dangerous schools in the district; and there we were: two shy, chubby girls who liked to learn, be nice to everyone, aka the perfect target for bullies..
School wasn’t a great experience for us. Other than learning, there weren’t any positives! Once we noticed that we both were suffering the same sort of bullying, we started to get closer and found in each other a kind of understanding you can only find when your pain is the same. ♡
Fast forward a couple months and we were suffering like sh*t! From stealing our lunch/money/random stuff; to ripping every single page of our notebooks so we couldn’t study; get things thrown at us; being called fat, ugly, whale, stupid; having knives pointed at us in case we wouldn’t cooperate; getting our very first mobile stolen as soon as you got it; doing homework for other people, being spat on, groped every day, seeing a kid being dangled from her feet only to have a coin falling from her pocket (they didn’t even keep the coin.. They freaking buried it.. Who does that to a 10 yo?! Freaking savages!) …. Witnessing a teacher’s wig being snatched off her head because she called out a student … etc, etc etc ... We were over it as soon as it started… We didn't want to go to school. I mean, can you blame us?!
The only good thing going for us was our friendship and I think we both held on to that very tightly… and after surviving almost the whole year, and our parents fighting to get us out of that school, we got some great news: we BOTH got accepted to an amazing school in another district. We were so excited…
The new school year started and along with it a whole new chapter of our lives. We knew each other, that school had a great overall reputation and we were finally out of that hell hole. During that school year we had our differences, there were some negative aspects of it (as any time you put a bunch of pre-teens together) but it was quite a positive experience.
And since not everything is unicorns and rainbows… mid-year D learned that her parents had decided to move away for work and we were both heartbroken. Our friendship, which had been the flagship of our youth (when you’re 12, two years of friendship IS A LOT!) was now being torn apart by hundreds of miles, an ocean and the fact that social media wasn’t yet a thing (it was 2002 people!)... we were devastated. We had to rely on how we felt, some handwritten letters (not often but very cherished) and the assurance we were friends regardless of the time and distance.
D moved to an island, and C moved schools once again. Both had to start over, and that was just so f***ing annoying. But oh hey, that’s life, right?
Several years passed and despite sporadic emails, we sort of lost touch.
End of Part I. Stay tuned for next week’s post and the middle stage of our 20 year friendship (so far).