by Naomi N.
In fifth grade, I had a lot of trouble with my friends. We had so many arguments, over so many little things. At one point during the year, my “best friend” and I had a huge argument. She gathered half of the fifth grade class, and together, they made audio recordings of themselves insulting me. One of the girls felt bad and played the recordings to me. Needless to say, I was extremely upset by it. A month later, my “best friend” cut off all ties with me and declared us not friends anymore. My friends and I were seen as “good Asian girls who got good grades”, and so the teachers and parents did not take the situation seriously. During this time, I was confused and I was hurt. So I began to write.
See, my favorite thing to do is to write. For me, creative writing is an escape, allowing me to immerse myself in an entirely different situation. I step into my characters and away from my own life. I don’t have to worry about the pressures of friendships and school and extracurriculars.
Some days, if I’ve had an argument with my friends, I will write about the argument. Thinking about the situation as a character and not as myself can sometimes help me figure out what to do and how to move forward.
In fifth grade, I wrote about what had happened and tried to make sense of it all. At the time, I had thought my friends had been ganging up on me. But once I had written about it and reviewed the story, I realized I had played a part in the conflict and they had reasons to be angry with me. Even now, I look back at that story and think about what happened.
I realized that it was a good thing that my friend and I took a break from each other. What we needed was space and time apart from each other to be able to process our arguments and learn to prevent them in the future. When we did decide to become friends again, our friendship was a lot stronger, after reflecting on what happened with cooler heads and older perspectives. We were able to put the arguments behind us and start again. It has been nearly two years since we had all those arguments, and in this time, we haven’t had a single fight.
Soon, I’ll be thirteen, in a much larger school with many more kids. I know there’ll be plenty of ups and downs, but I’ll always have writing to help me through it.
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