Stories from Chrissey

I was introduced to my first mean girl at a young age- and they haven’t been absent since. I think as you get older, it’s not that there are fewer mean girls. They get slightly better at disguising themselves and have new tactics. Terrifyingly enough, they are even worse- because they have the complexities and nuances of a grown adult woman but the immaturity, insecurity, and egregiousness of a thirteen-year-old dictator.

When someone thirteen years old is trying to manipulate you, it’s kind of weird and awkward, but when a full-grown adult does it? That shit is just tragic.

The other unsettling thing about adult mean girls is that they’re so much harder to avoid than their teenage counterparts—as is the case for Regina George in my life. It’s weird because she’s narcissistic, egotistical, selfish, a victimizer, insecure, immensely fragile, and all of the other things that come with being someone who has never been held accountable and is incapable of “reading the room.”

Still, I just can’t help but pity the poor little dumb idiot. She’s simultaneously one of the most vindictive people I’ve ever met and just sad. She lives in a world of delusion and fairytale, and if she ever got even the tiniest inkling of what the world truly thought about her, that would be the end. I think she secretly knows that, which may be why the rest of us suffer.

It’s weird; somewhere between childhood and adulthood, we develop the skills of empathizing with those who bully us and mistreat us. It doesn’t mean that I tolerate or endure it. It’s more so that I try not to let it bother me- I feel gratitude for the supportive relationships, fulfillment, happiness, and other positive things and, frankly, kind of pity her because I’d like to think she’d be a little less miserable if things were a little more bright in her life.

She is the type of person where people would be happier if she weren’t in their lives. How sad is that? To be so miserable, incompetent, useless, and egregious that people feel a sense of joy and liberation to be free of you and your bullshit?

Frankly, it’s easier for us to pity those who bully us, even though getting up and telling them off may be way more cathartic and its own form of justice.

Chrissey