fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5202 ]

[ SECRET POST #5202 ]

⌈ Secret Post #5202 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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I mean like, the kind where your peers don’t make it obvious or pick on you blatantly but things start clicking when you become more socially intelligent that people felt bad for you or tolerated you?

Well, that's kind of a fraught question to answer lol

I was definitely a weird kid, I definitely often felt like and probably was the weirdest and least cool and least attractive kid in most of my friend groups. At the same time, I think that my closest friendships have involved real affection and care. And that idea of not being liked and only being tolerated is something that is clearly a big issue for me, a big complex that ties into a lot of things, and so it's often really hard to disentangle whatever the actual reality was from the anxieties and things that I felt.

I can see that, thanks.

Probably. I mean, not even in retrospect, I was aware that during lunch I sat at the table of outcasts. Didn't care. The outcasts were lots of fun and a lot nicer than the "popular" kids.

And I mean, I have known that I was ugly since I was very young, and also didn't care because I had brains, and that mattered a lot more to anything I was interested in doing. So in hindsight possibly the fact I didn't care what I looked like probably didn't help, I'd leave the house looking like total trash and not think about it. I wasn't overtly bullied very often, just kind of ignored until it was time to pick teams for a spelling or geography bee, then everyone wanted to be my friend. XD Later I was told that I was "intimidating"... which is weird since I'm tiny and frail physically, but that might have played into it.

HA, i got told that, too: 'you were scary'. Like...really? Book nerd, sci-fi nerd, theater geek, was *scary*? Okay.

Funny how you see yourself, and then suddenly find out how (some) other people see you, and it's so strange and different and frankly baffling.

I mean I kind of get it. I think. Two possible things in play in my case, some variation may or may not apply to you or anyone else:

1: Found out later in life that apparently self-confidence is intimidating. And even if everyone else thought I was an oddball, I didn't care what they thought. (As someone else mentioned in this thread, undiagnosed Asperger's probably played a role in that.) I guess it's hard to enjoy bullying someone who doesn't really react to it. "You look like a bug!" "*shrug* Okay." Where can you go from there? ;)

2: I can't think of a way to say it that doesn't sound arrogant, but... there were "the smart kids", and then I had teachers going "........" at me pretty regularly when I bothered to speak up in class. Probably the other kids also were a little freaked out, or maybe just worried because the teachers tended to like me an awful lot.

So there are possible explanations, I suppose, but I still find it kind of bizarre that I wasn't actively bullied more than I was, seeing as I was so frail I had to quit school in 9th grade because I couldn't make it through a full day. :P

Yeah, that probably had a lot to do with it. I remember me and my bff back when went around for a full year talking in (bad) fake English accents, because it was *fun* and we enjoyed it, and when a couple more 'popular' people tried to come at us, we were like....'huh? whatever'.

People who don't react like you want them to react can be real downers, for bullies, heh.

Plus, i read a lot, and do remember people in about every class (not math, omg, not math) saying 'as her, she knows everything'. But i would just get so bored, and read ahead in the textbooks....

Hah, same. I used to be able to speed-read so it was either read ahead or draw in the margins.

Oddly enough it seems my frailty and weirdness should by all rights have gotten me physically bullied, but that really never happened either - except one time there was a kid that punched me in the head in middle school, on the bus. I was sitting there going "........." because I could not believe that just happened, staring after him, and as he walked back to the back of the bus, like ten other kids punched HIM, and then beat him up when we got off the bus. o_o

So I guess I was the weird kid, but sort of the token weirdo. No one actually wanted to hang with me or even talk to me, but everyone knew me, and hey - I was their weirdo.

Re: Were you the weird kid, in retrospect?

tabaqui - 2021-04-04 21:10 (UTC) - Expand

I was definitely told multiple times that some people were scared of me. It was solely because I would argue and push back when other people were wrong. It was pretty much exclusively fairly popular boys so I think they were so used to other students (especially girls) just going along with what they said that to have someone push back was very shocking to them.

Hah, I bet. Good on you for that - I mostly just kept my head down and tried not to draw attention to myself. (Which is not to be confused with being "shy". I was definitely not that. XD)

Yes. I had a narcissistic bully for a "parent" who never cared about my well-being and wasn't interested in me thriving because that didn't benefit them, so I grew up pretty retarded. I was "that kid" who never got a hint, who could never read the room, who did weird things, maybe even acted in hurtful ways and couldn't understand why people didn't like it. I like to think I've gotten a clue by now, though.

Yes and No.

Sigh. I was the "quiet outcast" kid. Like, I went to a super small and religious school. So, I don't think anyone really knew how to handle the situation. My "Best friend" was also my bully. I couldn't get away from her. (I also have a Narcisstic mother.) And another girl at school was friends with my previous "best friend" who... also became my bully. So, I'm sure they were saying things about me and no one knew how to talk to me about it. Teachers didn't intervene if they knew it was going on. Like, I'd often go sit by myself during lunch and stuff to get a breather from being ignored basically. And I lived really far away from everyone else, so I couldn't "hang out" after school and form friendships that way with my peers.

There has been some awkward convos in the first few years of college when I ran into them while I was home. After a while, I just...pretended I didn't know them. Maybe I was weird for being the one who read SFF books, drew, and liked name meanings. And I was so quiet, when I did speak up and sometimes yell (b/c teenage boys are arses) it scared them. I had no idea. Because NO ONE TOLD ME. (I would have been mortified.)

To feel bad or tolerate me, they'd have had to actually hang out with me. And they didn't. So... it was very lonely. Now, I find large groups exhausting and prefer being alone. Go figure.

I was very weird, but I hid it very well.

I was bullied a lot, largely for having undiagnosed Asperger's and not being good looking.

There was always at least one other person in each of my classes that outdid me with the socially awkward factor so I lucked out in that regard and was rarely picked on. My friends were all pretty upfront with each other to the point of bluntness so if any of us didn't want to be around one another, we just told one another to fuck off until we cooled down. Or didn't. There was an honesty to it when we parted ways too.

As an adult though, I feel like it goes both ways that my 'coworker friends' and I just tolerate each other because we have to. It's hard making legit friends after high school.

I have a group from high school and college and have never made a real friend since. I honestly don't understand how people do it

I don't either. I don't know how people find their people, and so close to them too. Everyone I find who is into what I like, they're either way too far from me, or if they're close, they either end up getting wrapped up in their own lives and drifting away, or they end up being insane and treat others awful.

I don't mean to jack the thread, sorry. I'm just tired of being in chatrooms and listening to the other people talk about what they're doing with each other when the pandemic is over, because they're in such close proximity of one another, and I'm the lone loser who has nobody where I am. Certainly nobody I feel I can trust to not be insane or distant.

NAYRT but I felt that lol. The lone loser in my case has always been me. For the longest time I had a big group of online friends, but they all lived in close proximity and would hang out together on occasion well... except for me. Just my luck for being born in a relatively small town I guess, but occasionally I'd meet (online) people from my town, and when we met up IRL they always had other groups of friends and it felt... sad and awkward, because I'm this shy and awkward IRL so. (But I had no problem talking to them online, and I still talk to them to this day!)

Sort of. I hid my weirdness very well so my very geeky pursuits were only revealed once we were good friends.
It's also astounding what high self-confidence get other people to believe what you're doing isn't weird, it's actually quite normal and why aren't you doing it.
(I mentioned above) It also apparently frightened people so no one's going to call out the girl who scares them.

I was never the weirdest kid, but I definitely think my peers in grade/middle school weren't sure what to make of me. I think they figured whatever was weird about me was because I was black and a nerd. My best friend tried to dump me to fit in with the popular crowd, but my mom and the most popular kid's mom were college friends, so jokes on her, I sat at the popular table whenever I wanted, I'd just been sitting at the outcast table because I wanted to sit with her (....and didn't really notice there were two classes of tables until later). She was so mad, lmao. High school, I was influential because I went to a nerd catholic school and I was a non-catholic jock for that crowd.

No, I was obviously picked on. Like, I didn't realize that when I was 6 or so and kids generally mingle even with the weird ones before 10 or so. The ostracism is often less blatant so it only became a problem when almost-friends switched to other schools, but by then I was 12 and had online friends and my way of dealing was just... doing what I wanted on my own, which involved dyeing my hair weird colors, being scaringly pessimistic and sarcastic and watching weird Japanese cartoon clips on my MP4 player, good luck to whoever wanted to approach me. It's still my default modus operandi when I'm not burning myself out at jobs honestly

Yes. I went through a lot of shit as a kid. Somewhere around my twenties though I started developing what I think of as my ability to fake normal. Looking back, I was always off socially, I never got timing right in conversation or knew how to make small talk. I was always just wrong, and it's easy to see now that the bullying was in response to that.

Nope, I was obviously ostracized and bullied. The best I ever did was hang out with other weirdos; the bullying wasn't quite so bad then. I definitely still assume that people tolerate me at best.

Yeah. I had undiagnosed autism (got diagnosed at 18, so useful), and I was a strange, touchy, anxious little girl. One of those kids who lurks around the playground pretending to be a cat or whatever. But hey, at least I got some good anecdotes out of it?

Actually, in retrospect, I think I was a lot less weird than I felt at the time.

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