Belonging: Mean Girls Are Terrible Role Models, Choose the People Who Want to be Around You

I got the inspo for this post after a long day at work talking to strangers. I’m in the food industry, and I was tending the window at a large coffee chain. Part of my job is to create the “experience”, or selling belonging to the customer. Something I made fun of in my youth. And it’s still not something I can fully get behind, only now it’s for different reasons. Let me explain.

Mean Girls Are Mean for a Reason

I’ve said before on this blog that I was raised by mostly women. Image obsessed women, where everything was a competition and there was enough spite being thrown around that we could have created our own professionally ranked sport. But it was not without reason. One of the subjects of our ridicule was meatloaf (the food, not the singer).

My grandmother, Grandma Pat, who was a model in the 50’s, got it in her to try out a new meatloaf recipe. She read somewhere that putting raisons in meatloaf would be a non-traditional take on an old stand-by. So she tried it, served it, and was ridiculed by our entire family for years to come. I remember not liking it then, but I was a kid. I didn’t like anything that was new, and if I ate meat now, I’d probably enjoy it. But we made it a family joke and it became a staple for decades.

Having Empathy for the Mean Girl Goes a Long Way

I was thinking about this on my way to grab a bite, and I felt bad for her. For context regarding the level of Pat’s meanness, this was a woman who slammed my thumb in a car door, then walked away from me while I was screaming to be let free. For all intents and purposes I should be happy with her ridicule. And I used to be in my youth. But when I got to the restaurant, sat down and relaxed a little, I saw it from her perspective. What if she was just trying to impress us, make us happy and to put an end to the ridicule?

This makes me sad to think about. What if she put herself out there, trying to do something that would make her feel good about herself, something grandmotherly and feel belonging with us, only to be torn apart for sport. Of course we were hurting too. From a battery of past abuses dispensed from her tongue. And she had a sharp tongue. Peter Tosh illustrates our family in his song “Stepping Razor” well, “I’m like a stepping razor, don’t you watch my size, I’m dangerous”. But she was brave enough to try to brake tradition and we sent her the message that it was not Ok to be nice, to try new things or change. So we hurt her. And again, the cycle of abuse continued by passing our hurt around.

Now that I’m older and wiser than I was in my youth, I can see the patterns. Something I think I’ve got a good handle on now. An update on my family, most of them don’t talk to or like eachother very much. And live secluded, untrusting lives. I’m guessing from the past hurts we’ve nurtured. And we definitely don’t feel a sense of belonging to one another. We also don’t talk about it, so there’s that too.

Not Talking About it Doesn’t Help

Our usual family gatherings were loaded with tension. But what made this so maddening was that we all ignored it. We would cut eachother with slights and euphemisms, using our sharp tongues and with an air of self righteousness. Business as usual. But everyone was scared and hurt. On edge, waiting for the next cut. If you’ve ever seen the movie “Rosemary’s Baby”, you’ll understand the tension I’m talking about.

In the movie there was a pregnant woman being taking care of by her family and neighbors while she was waiting to give birth. On the surface everything seemed pretty normal. Except that those supporting her were actually Satanists, and she was going to give birth to the antichrist. There was an inordinate amount of tension and fear underlying every interaction, every word. This was similar to what my family dynamic felt like.

The Feminine Mystique, The Reason Mean Girls are Mean

Betty Friedan’s, “The Feminine Mystique” tackles this issue. That the power of a woman’s charm is that she is expected to submit to a form of indentured slavery. Submitting to man’s, and societal expectations while sacrificing her freedom with grace and poise. Never feeling sorrow for their position, and always happy to help another.

But this was to be expected. Our family culture was a mirror of social pressures and bred resentment. And this was were my family was. Steeped in generations of resentment from roles surreptitiously foisted on one another because we didn’t know how, and were too afraid to break the status quo and whether the ridicule that comes with being unapologetically our own persons. Free from other’s expectations of us, by us. We were trapped in a prison of hate/fear and we were holding the key. Like Rumi said, “Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?”.

Below is a scene from the film, “Mean Girls” that was in popular culture some years ago. In the scene the antagonist played by Rachel McAdams tells Lindsey Lohan’s character to, “get in loser, we’re going shopping”. The values that are being touted in this scene are that the leader of the mean girls, McAdams, has what the others want: confidence in who they are, self-efficacy and a sense of belonging. So they do what she does, act like her, to be like her, and be liked. But what she’s really doing is pushing people away because she is afraid of being hurt and judged by others, and what her friends don’t realize is, that McAdams doesn’t feel belonging with herself.

She’s pretending she’s impervious to others judgements of her, by pretending to know how to be loved and accepted by her friend group by knowing what to wear, do, and how to look while carrying an air of false confidence. But like my grandmother putting raisons in her meatloaf, all she was looking for was to feel accepted by her friends. But they were afraid of losing her approval. So no one in my family really felt intimacy because our belonging was on the line and we were all too afraid to be our authentic selves for fear of being rejected. This is how we learned to fear love.

You are Loved for Mending Your Fences, Not Your Mistakes

This was something I didn’t get until recently. After I ended my marriage, stumbled into $126K of debt and lost most all of my friends. I had to clean up my act. The mess I made, as Dave Ramsey puts it. In so doing, I learned how to live my life right. It wasn’t the ways I hurt others that was good, or why I’m loved, but rather learning how to undo the mess I made by build something better. Aka building relationships and building love and belonging. The love is in the practice of cleaning up and the lessons you learn from the effort and right intention you put into your healing by mending your fences. This makes us stronger. The journey, not the hurts we’ve inflicted. And when you learn to love the work you do, that’s when you really begin to thrive. How did I mend my fences? It started where most things start for me, with a list.

Mending with Intension

Cultivating relationships was something my family was terrible at as you’ve probably already guessed. So maintaining healthy relationships and the boundaries that go with them was something I had to learn anew. This was easier than you may think. But first I had to learn, then put into practice, the new boundaries I wanted to keep. Which meant I had to understand my value and self-worth.

How Others Treat You is Dictated by How You Feel About, & Allow Others to Treat You

How Others Treat You

This seems like a no-brainer, but it’s elusive. I think this is because as I said above, many of us are afraid to be our authentic selves due to the fear of being rejected, like McAdams holding the key to belonging. And if you’re making decisions from a fearful place, you’ll probably compromise your dignity and self-respect to feel liked. As Lohan from “Mean Girls” did to feel the comfort of acceptance. Even if it means taking abuse from those who dictate your belonging. But if you’re sacrificing what you know to be right, being loved for who you really are and not wanting to be abused into conforming to what you’re told to be in order to belong, than you not only don’t belong to your “friends”, you also don’t really belong to yourself. Lose lose. So how do we break this cycle?

How You Feel About Yourself

This was intuitive… Sort of. Once I learned how to listen inwardly, to my emotional states, that’s when I understood what felt right and what was making me feel scared or hurt. I felt a sense of belonging to myself. More me. And once you understand the ebb and flow of how your relationships make you feel, then take care of yourself by removing yourself from the people, places and situations that hurt you and make you feel abused, demeaned in some way, less you, that’s when you start to build your boundaries.

This is also how you learn to treat yourself with dignity. And even when you learn how to move through life with dignity, there are going to be people who will try to strip you of it. Tear you down to feel self-righteous or better than you in some way. As though inner strength is finite. As a white man living in the US I recognize I was born with privilege. But more often then not I’ve known adversity.

Don’t Let Them Beat You Down

I’ve known poverty, was almost homeless on more than one occasion. I’ve swallowed my pride and went to the food pantry when I didn’t have enough money for groceries, even though I was living with family who had more than enough means to support me. I’ve known job instability. I’ve been fired from many jobs, ballpark 15, unjustly and have known discrimination. Most recently I was called racist for posting this sticker in this company’s group chat, and then verbally assaulted by the head of HR, my program director, and the co-worker I offended. Even after I attempted to apologize four times. All because I attempted to foster a sense of levity and belonging among my coworkers.

I also know what it’s like to work at a job where I was earning well under my potential. With a BA from a good school I was making less than 40K a year to service a $126K debt. No savings or support, without a car and relying on a combination of public transportation and my feet, during a commute that was an hour and a half one way, starting at 4am. I still prefer the bus to the train to this day. The people who ride the bus my be poor monetarily, but not in connection.

Building Your Boundaries, Standing Your Ground

Boundaries also seem like a no-brainer. But every one of the people who abused me above, including some family and friends, showed me how to build my boundaries by me refusing to take their abuse. And I did this by staying true to my values, being truthful about my feelings, to myself and those abusing me, and knowing when to walk away.

For example, during the meeting where I was verbally abused and falsely accused of being racist by the above company, there were eleven people at the meeting. Nine of which were higherups in the company doing the firing/abusing. The person I offended was not present. And even after they bullied and terrorized me for 45 minutes, with only my union rep by my side, who was less than supportive, I held to my values.

I told them I was terrified during the meeting, so scared from their verbal assault that I was literally shaking. And when all was said and done I held myself with dignity, telling them I was disappointed with their behavior, and walked away feeling proud that I could withstand their abuse and come out knowing I didn’t let them turn me into a version of myself, like them, I wouldn’t like. Also to not work for a company who treats their employees as they treated me. That’s real strength. Which brings me to the next lesson I learned.

Be Around People Who Are Good for Your Mental Health

There’s a line from a song that runs through my head often. It’s from The Roots, “The Next Movement” and the line goes, “I live my life nice but I’m not too bent”. I used to think that instead of “too bent”, the lyrics were “two bit”, meaning that I lived life with a strong moral compass, but I wasn’t a goodie-two shoes. In the past, anyone who wouldn’t allow me to abuse them was two bit, or how I used to view those who were vulnerable enough to be soft and open to authentic connection, but walk away from my abuse. Because they were rejecting my abuse, I thought that meant they were saying I was a bad person. Not worth being around. So I rejected them. This was similar to how those abusing me made me feel. But those who knew when to walk away instead of retaliating had a strong sense of self-worth, and were taking care of themselves by walking away saying, “I’m worth more than your abusing me”. What was stopping me from connecting authentically? Fear of being hurt.

I once described a lover as feeling like an open wound, and had another lover describe me in the same way. What I was recognizing was their willingness to be vulnerable enough to show me they were hurt, and trust that I wasn’t going to abuse them and their vulnerability. Because their hurt reminded me of how I hurt and didn’t belong. And nobody, including me, wants to be reminded of how we’ve been abused. Especially since other people are usually the source of our hurt. So staying in our hurt together, and trusting that we won’t hurt eachother again, is about the bravest thing we can do.

That’s how I was able to walk away with my dignity after being abused by all the people trying to strip me of it. I was brave enough to show my hurt, my wounds, and not inflict pain in retribution. And the people willing to be brave enough to be honest about how they hurt, or I hurt them and not hurt me in return, are the people I’m choosing to keep company with.

How You’ll Know

Once you start to pay attention to how you feel after you’ve been in a difficult volley of emotions, you’ll know when to take some time and space to check in with how you’re feeling. To calm yourself and ask if maybe you need to pivot, take a new course of action. This may take a little time, but you’ll get the hang of it. And when you feel belonging to yourself, that’s when you’ll feel belonging with others.

Because there will be patterns. You’ll have an interaction with a person, maybe it’s one that keeps coming up, then you’ll be able to connect the person, to the feelings, to the context, and then see how it all fits together, to affect your emotional state. Trust yourself and how you feel and you’ll be fine. That’s when you’ll feel authentic belonging, to the ones you love and who love you. I’ll leave you with a song that pops up in my head every once and a while. If you’re ever in doubt, listen to your heart : ) Peace, & thanks for reading 🏔️🌙🕯️🌧️💜💙

Image Credits: “That smug feeling when it’s 9.15am and you’ve already practised at @stretch_london with your sweat buddy @joshua_preston and taught a yoga class to your amazing #wearesocial yogis. Today’s going to be awesome! 😊 #yoga” by We Are Social is licensed under CC BY 2.0.