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Lauren Long (she/her/hers), Low Entropy Volunteer Writer

I have not been romantically involved with anyone, so the relationship I am going to tell you about is a friendship I have had since I was nine. The friendship between this person and myself was complicated when we were kids and teenagers because we ran in different social circles. We had some good experiences and some that were not so good. It wasn’t until we reached our mid-to late 20s that our relationship changed. It took a lot of work and open communication to get our relationship to be where it is now.

Where our relationships with people we have known since we were kids are concerned, it has been my experience that we often do not find out things about them until much later. After my friend and I cleared the air and laid all the cards on the table from the past, our relationship shifted in a big way. Because we were making a genuine effort at being more open with each other, I found out that she was going through many of the same things that I had gone through as a kid. I found out that my bullies in our class, who were the people she hung out with, were also bullying her.

At the beginning, I felt a lot of guilt because I did not know she was going through the same things I was; I thought that because she was popular, she was protected from that. Hearing her experiences made me realize that whether you are popular or not makes no difference when it comes to bullying. We’ve talked about our shared experiences a lot, and that’s how we’ve strengthened our friendship while also having our perspectives changed.

Looking back on it now, I can see how self-absorbed I was back then. I was so wrapped up in what was going on in my own life I was blind to the fact that other people were going through the same things I was. The bullying, the constant pressure to be someone I wasn’t, it never crossed my mind that there were other people going through that too, including my friend. 

Lady Gaga said in her Netflix documentary Five Foot Two, “I can bring my past with me, but I can never go back.” Well, I think that can be said for all of us. We always ask ourselves, “what if?” “What if I could go back in time and change this moment?” “What if I actually stood up for myself?” Throughout my many talks with my friend about our shared past experiences, I’ve often asked myself the question, “What would have happened if I had known this about her then? Would the outcome have been the same? Or would it have been something entirely different?” 

This is a conversation I’ve often had with my counsellor, about what I would do differently if I could go back and change certain things, but maybe my friend and I were meant to have these conversations later on in life all along. When you’re a pre-teen and a teenager, you don’t have the same emotional maturity that you have when you’re an adult in your late 20s, early 30s.

These conversations with my friend made me realize what I would not have been able to back when we were kids: just because someone hangs around with the pretty girls who always get the good-looking boys in the class doesn’t mean that they’re safe from the cruelty these girls show to those outside their social group. If anything, they can be the daily recipients of it.

Every relationship that we have in our lives impacts us in some way. It can be positive, negative, or a mix of the two. I’ve learned that people who first came into our lives as children can come back into them later as adults, and that occurs for a reason. Sometimes it’s to teach us something, other times it’s because fate or destiny, whatever you want to call it, can see that we need these people in our lives long before we can. 

I think the reason this friend came back into my life was because we needed to have the relationship we do now, but we both had to put in the work to get there. But also, I needed to learn that things are not as they appear on the surface. That beneath the two little girls who were doing what they needed to in order to survive the long school years, we were both hurt and lonely, and what we really needed was someone who could say, “I see you and you’re not alone.”

That’s something we all need. We all need someone to see us as we truly are, and we also need to learn not to judge before we know the full story, because once we do, everything changes. 

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Born and raised in Quesnel, BC, Lauren Long is a strong advocate for mental health and overall well-being, as well as being a major Swiftie and a role model for positive body image. When she’s not writing, you can find her on the pole, on the training mats or curled up with a good book.