It was right around the time Missy Elliot came out with the song “Get UR Freak On” that Martha made me cry. (If you haven’t seen the video, you need to!) It was during recess in junior high, she and our four friends were having lunch in the classroom. I mentioned that I loved the song and Martha replied, “Ew you like Missy Elliot! I heard she’s a lesbian!” I said, “So? Do you have a problem with gay people?” She said, without hesitation, “Yeah, I hate gay people. They’re gross. They’re going to hell.”

The rest of my friends were just silent. “Well, that’s discrimination. You’re prejudiced,” I said expecting my friends to chime in and defend me, but no one did. Why weren’t they backing me up?

Later I figured out it was because they agreed. They agreed with her. That was the first day in my whole 11 ½ years alive that I had heard about this—this homophobia. It was just OK to hate? It blew my mind. I cried at home because it made no sense. (It still doesn’t.) I was glad I stood up to her, but because I did rumors naturally floated around that I must be a lesbian. I totally got Janis Ian’ed by Regina George. It sucked. Not even because my friends were talking about me, but because I didn’t even want to be friends with my friends anymore. It was devastating. The next three years were awful. I pretty much just stopped talking to anyone.

When junior high was over we all went to different high schools—I never saw any of them again. I made new friends, but you know what? When I graduated high school I never saw any of my brand new high school friends again, either! All of the gossip, fights, and silent treatments—none of those things mattered because they don’t! Junior high and high school are just a couple of chapters in your epic novel of a life. Everything feels so big and heavy and important and URGENT because they’re the people you see every single day and have to deal with. In the end, there isn’t a single fight I had with a friend that altered the course of my future. I learned some lessons, I made some mistakes, but that’s growing up. The school hallways though, that’s just melodrama. College on the other hand—now that’s a different story.

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