I always had the same friends. The same ones that took me in when I was in third grade. They were all I had, so I didn’t know much better, but we were very different. While I played imaginary games, they’d gossip about the 5th grade scandal when Stacy kissed Jonathan beneath the slide. I couldn’t have cared less about ‘drama’; in fact, I did my best to stay away from it.

On the weekends my friends would go to the mall and talk about boys, while I prefered to play ninjas on the trampoline with my brothers. When they were into boys and dreaming of their first kiss, I was busy playing video games on my xbox, I didn’t even have my first crush till I was twelve. Even then I wasn’t completely sure what it meant to have a crush.

All through middle school I stuck with these friends. Even when in all honesty they didn’t deserve it. They weren’t by any means rude, they just weren’t good at listening. They’d constantly interrupt me and talk over me, and it made me feel invisible. I did everything to be like them. I’d buy clothes that they’d wear, even if I knew it wasn’t me. I’d go to the mall with them, when all I wanted to do was go home and play my guitar. When they brought up boys, I always made my crushes seem much bigger than they were, just to feel like I was part of something. But even through all of that changing, I was still invisible. Even though I felt unseen and unrecognized I still stayed, because in all honesty, I didn’t know where else to go.

When we started high school, I swore that it would be different. I felt that if they didn’t notice me when I tried to be like them, they wouldn’t notice if I did my own thing. When I started my Freshman year I wore clothes that I liked, of course they weren’t much like my friends clothes, they were almost vintage looking. I’d always been drawn to a certain 80’s style, and they had been drawn to whatever everyone else wore. But even though I was more like myself, I still felt down on myself. It’s a sucky feeling when everyone is so into your best friend, and no one pays attention to you. It was only the second week of school, when my best friend, at the time, had already been asked for her number twice. She had always gotten a lot of attention from boys, and I never really did. I was insecure, and not confident in my own skin.

She’d look at a guy and say, ‘I wanna get to know him, cuz he’s cute!’ While I’d say, ‘Oh he’s too cute to like me.’ I had always been really good at hiding my feelings. I almost felt like I wore a mask. No one knew how I really felt. Even now, only a few know now how I felt.

I always put on a show. I’d change my personality around my friends, I guess I wanted to be like them, have the guys drool over me. When in reality, they wanted to be more like me. It’s funny how that works isn’t it? They’d look at me and see me as a free spirit who did whatever she wanted. I wished I saw myself that way. I do now.

It wasn’t till my sophomore year, when I had finally had enough. It was the day before Christmas Break. I had just gotten my haircut the day before, and I was really excited to go to school and have people compliment my new hair. It wasn’t much, obviously, but even just little things made me feel good, even if it meant someone commenting on my haircut. To this day I still remember how I dressed and how I walked into the school. I was confident, and it felt good! I walked straight up to my friends, excited for them to notice a change, but instead they were too caught up in their own lives to notice me. I remember that feeling vividly. Suddenly my confidence had disappeared into this horrible feeling of being unseen. I walked away that day with a pit the size of a softball in my stomach, because deep down I knew that was gonna happen.

At lunch the same thing happened. They didn’t even say ‘hi’ when they saw me. Instead they sat down and started talking about their christmas lists. They didn’t even acknowledge my existence. I was sick of this feeling, so I stood up, and without a ‘bye’ I walked away.

I didn’t know where I was going in the thirty minutes we had left of lunch, but I knew I wasn’t going back. For a moment I just wandered through the halls in search of anyone I knew, but I was shy and didn’t know many people. Suddenly, out of nowhere, I thought of an old friend from my freshman year, Kerri. I remembered that her and her friends sat in a dark and quite frankly creepy hallway. It was that moment I decided to go and see her.

As I walked over to her, I could feel my stomach churning. I hated stepping out of my comfort zone, mostly because I didn’t step out of it often. But as I saw Kerri, I wasn’t as nervous anymore, she was the same as she was last year, and I missed her. When she saw me, she jumped up and ran to hug me! “Autumn! It’s been so long! You cut your hair! I love it!” she shouted. Even though it wasn’t much, hearing that was so nice. I hadn’t seen her in a long time, and yet she noticed something as simple as me cutting my hair shorter by two inches.

After hugging me, she insisted I sit with her and her friends, so I did. It was weird sitting with her friends. They were absolute dorks, but so was I. For the rest of lunch I just listened to them talk about the most random things! I loved hanging out with them. Finally I felt like people could see me. I wasn’t invisible.

As I walked home that day, I had just assumed that I’d do as I always did, and fall back to my old friends, after all they were my safety net. But something just felt off. For the first time, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to fall back. I kept walking till I reached my door, and it was then, when the door wouldn’t open, when I realized I was locked out for an hour or two. Maybe it was the fact that it was only twenty-five degrees outside, or maybe it was the fact that I was already having a bad day, but I started to cry. Crying turned to bawling. I had no idea what I was gonna do. Something about being alone, crying in twenty-five degree weather, with a small coat, makes you think. It was then I realized that I needed better friends. Something had to change, and this time it wasn’t going to be me.

In tears, I texted Kerri and told her what had happened and that I couldn’t be invisible anymore. I asked her if I could hang out with her from then on. She was so supportive and excited that I would be hanging around her. I finally felt stable. Not yet so confident, but I was getting there, and for the first time in a long time, I felt okay.

After that I did what I said I would, and I began to hang out with this new group of friends, and they thought I was funny, pretty, and worth being around. It was a weird feeling being myself around them. Growing up, I had just assumed that you were never yourself around your friends, and that’s just how it was. But with them I was myself, and they loved me for that. They liked me for me, and finally in a long time, I did too.

Every now and then I’d see my old friends and I’d give them a little wave and a confident smile. Sometimes I wonder how my life would be, had I had fallen back into my safety net. I’m glad I didn’t. Suddenly I was confident. I was happy. I was dorky. I was nerdy. I was me. Finally me.