In my private Christian school, I met some good people. Unfortunately, there's always that one person, and in a school of 8 students, it wasn't like I could do much to avoid them. She was hurting, and I understood that. But it was a big mistake to tell her I'm around if she needed anything at school. It was an even bigger mistake to give her my number. She texted me daily, even though I hardly ever responded. At school, she complained about how much she hated life. The teachers knew everything since I was smart enough to tell them, but no amount of therapy, friendship, and medication really helped that girl out.
The school held a BBQ one weekend evening, where I met the gal's mom. The mom must've been the source of many of the issues. Right away, I sensed something was wrong with her. She was definitely a helicopter parent, since she followed her near-18 year old daughter around, telling her to not leave her sights and to keep her phone on at all times. (I'll add, the girl had a flip phone, and her parents installed some weird tracking software on all of her electronics, that blocked most social media sites and emailed her internet history to her parents everyday.) Later, that mom started talking to my mom. She seemed pretty surprised by how relaxed my mom is with me, especially since my mom was letting me take care of myself at the BBQ, even when it was dark and later in the night.
After that night, the girl got jealous or something of me, and seemed to want to be me. She always barged into my personal space and told me even more TMI stuff about herself. After that, I never really told her about myself, and just did my best to avoid her in the last couple months of school. She went to my same church, and when school finally ended, she hunted me down and sat uncomfortably close to me in the seat I saved for my mom. I side-eyed her as she explained how much she missed me and wondered why I wasn't getting her texts or phone calls (I blocked her number). The church was loud, and something in me snapped. I just got up, told her to get the **** away from me, and that was that. Her face just dropped and she hightailed it out of sight. A few minutes later, my mom came by with cookies and drinks. I told her what happened, and she praised me for standing up for myself, and said not to feel bad. I forgot about that for a long time, until my mom asked me about it a few months ago.
Truth is, I probably wouldn't have found myself in that situation if that school didn't obligate us to be kind no matter what. I'm all for the "love thy neighbor" stuff, but I'm pretty sure Jesus flipped tables and drove merchants out using a whip at one point. Of course, I'm too often too nice and respectful, but even I snap sometimes.
My encounter with that girl made me even more socially wary than I already am, and was part of why I wanted to get out of that school ASAP. I felt cornered, and I knew I couldn't trust the teachers to take my side if I ever retaliated. I didn't know what that girl was capable of. She was bigger than me, we were in a very small fundamentalist Christian private school, and she was being constantly monitored by her helicopter parents, so I avoided even dropping a hint that she should go away. That was until summer began and she found me in the church. When I was out of that school and she was too, and I had blocked her out of my life, I felt a surge of confidence to defend myself. While I'm not exactly proud of telling her to basically f-off in church, I'm proud that I got her to go away and never return.
I still think about her, and I feel bad for her. From what she's told me in her rants, her parents were overprotective of her at the start. She began to rebel, but that just made the chains tighter. She lost all of her privacy, and she lost her social life. Her parents likely used her rebellion to support their helicopter parenting, and that is depressing to me. What makes things worse, is that I don't think her case is all that unique and isolated.
