My name is Samantha and I stumbled across your website after a colleague shared it on his instagram page. I love what you’re doing by giving people the platform and the heart to share the things they’ve experienced in life without saying who they are. Being anonymous makes it so much more easier to do so without the fear of being judged. I always say, you never know what a person went through or is currently going through!
I am 27 years old and I am the oldest of my mother’s four children. My childhood was okay, as my mother did the best she could as a single parent. I guess because we were good kids who didn’t give my mother any problems, is the reason why she failed to have real life conversations with my siblings and I. As far as my father is concerned, he wasn’t around and it didn’t bother me or my siblings at all. I always felt like I couldn’t miss what I never had.
I was a gifted child who graduated from high school & college 2 years earlier than the normal child while obtaining my doctorate’s degree. I am a drop dead gorgeous woman who never let my appearance get the best of me. Although men often flocked my way reminding me often that I resemble Steve Harvey’s daughter.
My problem is that the friends I HAD, I always found myself “dumbing”myself down to meet their low exceptions because they settled for the bare minimum in whatever they did. I was a go-getter, but I was so easily influenced by my friends that I didn’t have the heart to say ever say no because I didn’t want to appear like I was better than them. Looking back at us now, I really was better than them!
My story goes like this; One night after hanging out with two of my closest friends, I ended up staying at their apartment because I was too fried to drive home. I woke up a few hours later and overheard them talking about me in the other room. “Oh, Samantha thinks she’s the s#@t. She thinks she’s better than us. Why does all the men flock to her when we go out? Remember when she didn’t drink and we got her messed up after convincing her to play the shots game with us? We were cheating our butts off and making her take shots that we really had to take. Remember you got her to try the laced blunt when she thought she was really smoking my medical Marijuana? What about that Molly she thought was a Motrin and she took it? She’s so freaking gullible and stupid! We should get her so messed up that she can’t ever recover. Like really mess her up!”
I was in so much shock from hearing my friends conversation about being so deceitful towards me that I almost couldn’t gather myself together, and what I shared was only a portion of their conversation. There was so much more! I was so angry that part of me wanted to bust through the door and start whipping their behinds. Instead, I exited the room in silence and I didn’t utter a word as I grabbed my purse and left. The look on their faces told me that they knew I had overheard their conversation. They just didn’t know what part of the conversation I actually heard. I haven’t spoken to them since.
I never shared my story with anyone outside of my therapist until now. I was too embarrassed! There were so many mysterious things that happened with me that I now believed those friends were the cause. Like, paperwork for my college classes disappearing from my files on my computer after my friends used it to log into their social media accounts, money missing, my credit card having purchases that I didn’t make even after I received new replacement cards.
My siblings would’ve been so disappointed in me because they looked up to me because in their eyes, I never did any wrong. I can only imagine how my mother would’ve felt by me being so gullible just to fit in.
The lesson I learned through this experience is to never dumb yourself down to meet other people’s low expectations from where they are in life. It’s okay to not fit in. It’s okay to not do drugs or use alcohol. It’s okay to say no. It’s also okay to leave phony friendships alone without an explanation. Attached onto people who want the same or more out of life than you. Attached onto people who are motivating and encouraging you. Please!
Sincerely Samantha