Once upon a time, there was a girl.
She was born in a foreign country, but both of her parents had citizenship in Australia, so when she was one, they moved to Perth. They lived there for a year then moved to Melbourne when she was two.
The girl and her family moved next door to another family with another little girl, Kianne. Kianne and the girl became friends gradually. Then the girl moved when she was three, but only to the suburb over. By this time, the girl had a little brother.
On the first day of school, the girl only knew two people: Kianne and a family friend, Daniel. She was very shy and people didn't tend to notice her. Then the girl became close friends with a girl named Natasha. Natasha got the girl into lots of trouble, so the next year they were separated.
When the classes were announced for next year, the girl eagerly scanned for a friend or two. The only person she had put in her list (you were to put the names of five people you worked well with) was Lilly. The girl didn't actually know Lilly, but had heard about how caring and kind she was.
The girl didn't have any friends in her class, and she had no one to play with during recess and lunch. She had asked almost everyone in her class, but they all had friends from last year. The girl asked two friends, Audrey and Hafsa, if she could play with them instead. They agreed but the girl always felt like she wasn't part of the group due to Audrey and Hafsa knowing each other from the previous year. Then Hafsa left.
Audrey had no other friends but the girl, so they played with each other, and soon the girl and Audrey had made new friends as well: Lilly and Zoe. However, the girl and Audrey were best friends by this point and so were Zoe and Lilly. It was perfect.
Until the next year.
Zoe wasn't in their class, so Lilly had no where to turn but to Audrey and the girl. The three became very close and shared all their food and secrets. They continued this way until Grade Four.
In Grade Four, Lilly left to a school that had a better music program. She was very good at piano and had to memorise entire songs because she couldn't see the sheet paper.
The girl and Audrey started hanging out with two other girls, Tori and Ruby. Tori had only just joined their school and was immediately friends with Ruby. However, Ruby and Audrey didn't get on, and they had to stop being friends. There was crying and screaming and lies. Lots of lies.
The girl stood by Audrey the entire fight and Tori left Ruby. Another girl, called Natalia, joined. In Grade Five, Audrey, Tori and Natalia started mixing with girls who did not like the girl, and so she left to make new friends.
Audrey, Tori and Natalia were actually not in the same class as her, so she took this opportunity to befriend others. She reconnected with old friends and made new friends. The girl started talking to Audrey and found they had left the other nasty girls. The girl split her time between Audrey, Tori and Natalia; and Lulu, Abi, Ang, Stella and Fifi (her class friends).
Everyone was happy and this continued into Grade Six (where she and her class friends were the biggest friend group in the class, but they were also friends with some of the girls family friends, so it was about half the class) The final year of primary school was upon them. The girl had been there for seven years and did not want to leave.
But leave she must, so she went into high school feeling confident.
By the end of the day, she realised she knew very few people in her class, and the people she did didn't particularly like her. She made two new friends, Jihoo and Isabela.
The girl knew that a lot of her friends, the old grade one group and the newer grade five group, were not in her class or some not in her school.
Stella had made plenty of new friends and Tori and Natalia had become friends with the people in her class who did not like her, so she stuck with Jihoo and Isabela for a while until Tori and Natalia practically dragged her to meet their new friends, and to her surprise they did not hate her.
Instead, they became close friends and Jihoo became part of their group. Isabela drifted away.
The girl went to school camp and came back with a crush on a girl and a bisexual heart. She drifted from her friends gradually until one fateful day.
She was talking to her friends Joskin and Tori when the others started to talk in a cluster. Joskin listened in and told the girl and Tori what he had heard. They were going to kick the girl out of their group. She left, but full of anger. She told one of their secrets in a regretted moment. Then the next drama with them began.
It had started as a personal fight between two distant friends, but the other girl told all of the girl's ex-friends what had happened. There was crying and screaming and lots of hate. But in this fight, the girl realised that one of the people she considered not a friend was fighting for her. She realised sometimes friends come from unexpected places.
The girl started hanging out with another girl called Trinity and Isabela again. One day, something went wrong. The girl didn't know why or how, but a shift had occured and she wasn't their friend.
In class that day, a girl asked if she could sit next to the girl and told the girl her name was Caitlin. Caitlin and the girl soon became best friends.
Stella and the girl had reconnected too, over their love of DC Comics and walking home together. Stella was questioning her sexuality and the girl helped her find what she felt comfortable as: pansexual.
Now, the girl is faced with Year Eight and hope that maybe a friendship might last a couple more years.
Oh, right. The girl has many names. You may know her as Shortcake, or Ughlifeissoboring, or Gita.
Gita is hiding under her doona, hoping her parents don't discover her love of writing that started when she was just ten years old and wrote an unfinished story about Minecraft on a now-dead iPhone 5.
Gita wants to become a famous writer one day. Or comic maker. Or both. Who knows.
Oh wait, I do.
In case you didn't guess already, I'm Gita and I'm the girl.
And boy am I glad I wrote this.
