Confessions: I'm a bitch.

I have a bitchy component to my character. I think most people do. 

I think bitchiness happens where we don't have the resolve or the desire to prevent our insecurity, selfishness or ambition from overriding a balanced and mature decision making process. In more chronic or reactive cases, bitchiness can be what happens in the absence of a balanced and mature decision making process, or whilst one is still developing.

However bitchy I might be now is not a patch on how I used to be. As a young person, say 11 to 13 years of age, I was the most horrible bitch I knew (N.B:I wasn't exactly Mother Teresa from 14-16, but definitely much improved). 


I didn't start rumours as such, I told myself, I just bounced ideas about people I didn't like off girls who were renown for being blabber mouths. My style was about efficiency and I knew that whatever I was saying would turn into a rumour and I usually would only have to speak to one person. 

The worst part about my bitchiness wasn't that I made things up about people, it was the oppose. Most of the time whatever I was telling the school gossip was true, it was that by sharing that information I was completely violating the trust of the person being spoken about. It was information that was personal, usually revealed in the confidence of the girls' change rooms (a rare boy free environment in a predominantly male school) that the whole school did not need to know. If I felt a girl had done an injustice against myself or a friend or was posing a threat to me in some way, I would usually find a way to take them down a peg. 

I also really liked the power I felt when I asserted some influence over the people around me, often without them knowing it.


Even so, rumours were not my main game. The nameless, faceless bitchiness did not appeal to me hugely. After having taught me for about 3 weeks, my grade 5 teacher Mr George (education legend) had it right, "Eliza has the ability to use words as weapons." From year 7 I deployed these weapons much more frequently. I guess making articulate and witty remarks made me feel clever on one level. What I didn't properly comprehend was that by being as articulate as I was I could slice people much deeper with fewer swings of the knife. Some of the remarks stung on impact; others were more like car bombs. At first the comment mightn't have seemed hurtful, until the recipient comprehended all that was implied in it upon reflection a few moments later (Kaboom!). 

I am ashamed that I behaved the way I did. I met some wonderful girls whom I otherwise had a lot in common with and that I should have become good friends with. I couldn't see past my own ambition or adolescent anguish to see them as people and not as threats. I missed out on making some really valuable friends. It was entirely my fault and no mystery that I ended up with very few female friends and made the few friendships I did have with girls very difficult.

In year 7 I went through a phase that most go through in about year 9. As an 11 or 12 year old adolescent, my development was all over the place.

A lot of things came too easily to me, which was to my detriment. I demonstrated a level of competence across a number of areas which did not match my maturity. I had no idea what it felt like to work hard, because I didn't need to to accomplish the things I wanted. In one sense, I was more mature of my peers. I was ahead in the sense that I hit my most difficult, heinous phase 2 years earlier than most. However, once I entered that phase, how it effected me made me significantly less mature. By this, I mean that a feral 15 year old may be more advanced in their development than a 12 year old, but the 12 year old is probably more level headed. Socially, this left me all out of synch with my peers. 


For me, the process of growing up happened in a peculiar order. There is a standard developmental pattern that suggests that young people will go through certain phases at certain times. I did most of these a long way out from that order.

I spent a fair amount of time at this age creating havoc at home, too. I terrorised my sister and my Mum. My sister was so terrified of me that, at 9 years old, she could only get to sleep snuggled in with our parents. My Mum and I fought daily. I was extremely manipulative. I never did the standard tweenage "I hate you, you don't love me" stuff. I would tear shreds off her and refused to engage with her about anything. A lot of kids will do this for an hour, a day or a week. I ignored and excluded my Mum for years, leaving her feeling a very profound and devastating kind of rejection. I cannot imagine how horrible it must be to genuinely feel, as a mother, that your daughter doesn't love you and sees no  value in the qualities and support you have to offer her.


I made life so volatile for my family that they seriously considered sending me to an all-girls boarding school interstate. Finances were one hindrance. My Mum explained to me recently that my behaviour was so menacing that she wanted to be close enough that if school rang her again saying that they couldn't deal with me she only had to go to Athelstone (15 min drive from Adelaide CBD), not Canberra (13hour 45min drive from Adelaide =P). 


My parents did their absolute best to help me and tried to get me to see psychologists and psychiatrists however they could.  I was so resistant to this that a went through quite a few. Most of the time I wasn't told that I was going to an appointment, because I'd simply refuse to go if I was. I remember one time I was so mad that I'd been forced to see another shrink that I put my feet up on seat and refused to say anything for the entire hour. Not knowing where I was going made me feel out of control, whenever I felt out of control my behaviour would escalate dramatically.


There was a lot going on in my little head, I was convinced that there was something intrinsically wrong with me and that without me, my parents would have the perfect family. This feeling is a hard one to explain. To me, feeling deeply flawed as a person was not something I just felt when I was in a bad mood, it was something I was conscious of at all times. I was convinced of it entirely and it took years for me to gradually come to the realisation that I don't have a black mark on my soul, I'm just as flawed as every person and probably no more so. 


I think I was probably behaving like a wounded dog. When dogs get hurt, they react arbitrarily aggressively toward anyone who comes near them. Obviously to assist an injured animal, you have to get close to them, so they end up hurting the people trying to help them. One of my dogs injured herself and ended up biting my brother and sister when they tried to help her. After she had been taken to the vet and was no longer in pain, she was incredibly remorseful. I was distressed in response to an injury created by my somewhat extreme process of self-analysis (that was heightened by puberty) and bit most people that tried to help me. (However, there were a few special people who were the exception to this rule.) 

Teen and tween girls can be horrible. I certainly was. I should have been so much nicer than I was but unfortunately I was not mature enough to see how great having close girl friends can be. I also didn't realise at that time how wonderful mother-daughter and sister relationships can be. I am deeply sorry for all the hurt I caused.

To give myself some credit, I have come a long, long way. Ironically, going through that horrible phase of my life has given  me a level of insight. This helped make me more resilient when karma (or whatever term you prefer) came back to bite. Which it did, but that is a story for another post. 


My approach to managing this ugly part of me is by attempting to be self aware. I acknowledge that it exists and trying and try to keep my bitchy thoughts and behaviour to a minimum. This has become less and less of a struggle and now that my behaviour has changed, I no longer feel like I'm fighting against established habits. I have new habits. Over time, I've come to accept that I'm probably only as flawed as the next person. Accepting that my existence wasn't some kind of biological fault has been challenging, but has made me able to see how many loving and supportive people I have around me. I am so thankful that my family loved me enough to see me through and love me enough not to hold it against me now.


The hardest part has been trying not to get swallowed by guilt and trusting that I've changed so I won't hurt people like that again. I have been through phases where I've isolated myself entirely from people around me because I've been so afraid of causing more hurt.


"What is the point of this post?" 


Good question. The point of this post is for it to be publicly recorded somewhere that I'm very sorry to the people I hurt. If you know one of these people, please send them the link if you think they'd appreciate an apology. There is also an element of me trying to find a way to incorporate that time of my life into my personal narrative without the baggage attached. We are all flawed and go through times where we don't act as we should. We can all change. It's hard but it's possible and if you're stuck in a rut of some kind, it doesn't have to be forever.