Middle-Aged Mean Girl Isn’t A Good Look
By: Felicia C. Sullivan
Tags: Internet, Culture, Relationships, Social Media, Writing

It’s easy to be cruel than to be kind. I know this because I used to be a garbage person. Years ago, I was mean to Rachel. High school mean, only we were adults in our twenties attending a graduate school whose tuition costs more than most homes in the U.S..

Rachel was a year ahead of us and was the kind of writer we all wished we could be — her short stories were dark, potent, and seemingly effortless to write. She’d been published in respectable literary journals and was composing a collection of stories while we struggled to submit ten pages of writing for the weekly butchering otherwise known as “workshop,” where our peers would wield their scalpels and tell us, with glee, just how bad of a writer we were.

But Rachel wasn’t just good, she was exceptional.

Hers was a home on the tony Upper West Side, and the one time I visited her parent’s apartment I looked around and felt all that I didn’t, and would never, have. I grew up in apartments that never got clean no matter how much you scrubbed, and I was the first of my family to attend college, much less graduate school. My writing would always be labored.

Back then, I was a shell of a person; I cared more about the mask I’d created and affixed over my face instead of being comfortable in the skin I was born in. Better to suffocate than to be exposed and lay yourself out to bear. However, Rachel carried her discomfort and awkwardness with an honesty I admired but couldn’t fathom for myself. Her lipstick was sloppy — it was as if she’d been kissed one too many times, and she often complained about the excess weight she carried, especially when surrounded by women who were surgical in the way they preserved their shape.

But Rachel was public with her pain, and perhaps it was jealousy — she was achingly and blindly real while I was manufactured and fake — that made me want to break her in places she’d already been broken.

I was such an asshole to Rachel, smiling to her face while gossiping behind her back. I cringe when I think about it now, embarrassed by the kind of person I used to be. Even though our friendship didn’t last long I still think about how mean I was to her, even now, two decades later. It’s easy to spread one’s pain like sickness instead of tending to our wounds.

I remember apologizing to Rachel and I was humbled by the ease in which she seemed to have forgiven me. We maintained a cordial friendship because who wouldn’t continue to regard their tormentor with suspicion? She published a flawless story collection to deserved acclaim while I struggled to finish my first book. Perhaps it was my need to draw a line between the person I was and the person I was trying to be that I was desperate in the way I tried to help her book succeed.

Back then, I’d acquired some minor (we’re talking minor) literary cache having published a successful literary magazine, which gave me access to the kind of people who could further champion Rachel’s work.

One day someone approached me and said, you realize Rachel hates you, right? She’s just pretending to be your friend because of who you know. She doesn’t actually like you. I mean, look at how you treated her. I felt then what I had made her feel in graduate school — humiliated, ashamed, and the punch line to a very public joke. Rachel held up a mirror to the mask affixed to my face.

I learned then that it’s easy to be cruel — the work is in being kind. You can only be kind and honest with others if you’re decent to yourself. I try hard to be decent, but it’s easy to judge. Petty is the pursuit of least resistance. We encounter cruelty in all its insidious forms everyday — it’s become common.

We’re mean because it’s easy to make others feel as we have always felt — small.