How To Be A Bitch (On Hold)

➸ zero: who you deserve to be

➸ zero: who you deserve to be

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//REWRITTEN//

     From the moment I stepped foot on this planet, I've always been the third wheel. I was the thirdwheel between Jayne and her best-friend - who was also the scariest dude alive - during middle school when I had no friends to walk around with.

     They always used to talk about things I never understood so I just stayed quiet and listened to their utter rubbish talks. Even when I did ask my sister about it she just replied in that bossy voice of hers, "It's mature talks, Caroline."

     And then when I couldn't handle any more of their 'mature talks' anymore, I hung out with my brother Derek who was a freshman in high school. He was in the football team which meant that all his friends were huge beefy guys who smelled like sweat and rotten pizza so that didn't last for long either.

      By the time I reached high school, I had given up on finding people to spend my time with. I was thus the lonely girl who was picked on by even the weakest nerds of the school. That was my life and I had always thought that it would be my life forever until Grace White entered the picture.

     The first friend I had ever managed to make was Grace White. I'm not saying that after she became my friend people stopped picking on me but I somehow managed to bear it all with her by my side. Even when I was the DUFF. 

       Grace was the only person who actually talked to me because she wanted to. Not because she needed something from me or needed my help for something. We soon became friends in a couple of days and is a few weeks time - we were inseperable. Go figure.

But even after I became friends with Grace, I was still the same old tool. I apologized all the time because I felt like I was always in the way. It was like I was apologizing for my own existence. Even after the few times I stood up for myself, or spoke out against something, I'd apologize.

Where did this passive, shrinking violet routine get me in life? I landed in the intersection of fuck-off and fuck-you's with a single friend and no respect.

In a series of events, eventually something happened. Something that I hadn't quite expected.

My childhood crush Ashton Dallas asked Grace out on a date. I never saw this coming but I knew that a lot of guys in the school wanted to go out with Grace. After all, she was the perfect girl - with her dark brown shoulder-length hair, long legs which were tanned just the right amount and long black eyelashes, she looked like God had spent an entire week to make someone as beautiful as her.

Grace didn't tell me about it though because I heard it the next day in school from some cheerleaders who can't stop gossiping even if their life is at stake. 

I don't know exactly how I felt after I heard that. It was something in between anger and hurt. Anger because I had loved Ashton ever since I first saw him in kindergarten when I didn't even know the exact meaning of love. And hurt because Grace didn't bother to tell me about it.

I didn't ponder much upon that though, because I knew that Grace would have her own reasons. For example, she didn't want to hurt me that is why she kept it to herself, after all - she knew how much I loved Ashton.

But when Grace didn't show up to school and neither did Ashton, I knew that something was wrong. Very very wrong.

So I did what a best friend would do when her best friend wouldn't show up to school. I called her. And when she didn't pick up, I decided to stop by her house to see what was wrong. 

Imagine my surprise when I saw her on the couch of her living room - from the window - all curled up in Ashton Dallas' arms, kissing him.

Obviously, something eventually changed within me: I found my voice and my fire. I think that the betrayal that I experienced right in front of my eyes, simply put, made me mad. 

That night I stayed up all night crying my eyeballs out until there was no tears left in my eyes. I was tired of being a bland, nice noodle. It's not like I just flipped that day and got my lips pierced and shaved half of my head, but it was almost as if I woke up one day without the suffocating weight of niceness. 

And to be clear, when I'm talking about being nice, I mean niceness in that god-forbid-you-upset-someone way, wherein you're stifling your opinions just to keep the boat from rocking. 

Being 'not nice' doesn't mean being proactively mean; it's not like I'm going to shove a door on someone's face and force them to listen to Ke$ha on the subway because I want to "be a bitch." 

When I learned to be a bitch, it didn't mean I started being a provocative jerk, screaming at strangers and publicly sticking my middle finger just to remind the world that I did all the work in group projects, had my best-friend betray me and I'm pissed off because of that.

"Bitch" has, historically speaking, been an insult hurled towards aggressive woman. But when the occasion merits it, what's so wrong with that? Being a bitch can be a very good thing.

Being 'nice' however, can be pretty shitty. Niceness can make you an easy target as a garbage disposal for crap work that no one else wants to do. 

We're so concerned about being nice and being liked that we fail to channel out inner bitch.

So I changed, just like that. Someone once said: "Sometimes you make choices in life and sometimes choices make you."

And here I am, the once-upon-a-time doormat Caroline van der Woodson, just one step away from being who I deserve to be.