Navigating the murky waters of Female Friendships
For as long as I can remember, female friendship groups have been the bane of my existence. No matter how hard I tried, (and believe me, I did), it just never clicked for me in the sex and the city, sisterhood of the travelling pants way I so desired. Don’t get me wrong, I have female friends, TONS of them (who probably read the title, thinking what is she on about 🤣🤣) but we are not one friendship group, we have never been and I can (now) honestly say that if we never become a friendship group, I’ll be perfectly okay.
I will own my bullshit. I have a big mouth, I lack tact – it’s not always clear to me what is a secret and what is not. I used to be really good at keeping in touch and following up but between motherhood and COVID, I let that one slip, I love really hard which I’ve realised is not always easy to trust or digest especially with all the trauma in the world. I’ve been known to give the odd unsolicited advise, I am ruled by my emotions so you can’t count on me to not come for the boy that broke your heart, or block the girls that were mean to you.
My relationship with female friendship was tainted from the jump. Now that I journey back I don’t know if I ever stood a chance. As a child I was always an easy target. I was an extremely emotional kid & I internalised every single bad word, bad stare and bad thought that was ever directed at me and I guess this was why I got bullied.
I was made fun of for being dark skinned by dark skinned girls who also happened to be my friends. We must have been about 8–10 years old then and it is my biggest childhood trauma, one that I still struggle with till this day. I was called black sh*t a lot, by black girls who were meant to be my friends. It still makes no sense. I mean it does – dark skin was not an accepted standard of beauty even by the dark skinned community until Lupita in 2014 BUT that’s an entirely different story (in fact, it will be my next). So I guess the girls were projecting their hate for themselves and to be honest I don’t even know which is sadder.
I never confronted my friend-bullies, I am not quick or witty with my come backs so it was easy to bully me. It affected school work and my eating and sleeping even. I hated waking up and going to school to endure more suffering. A day where no one was mean to me was a good day. I would always cry at home and it traumatised the hell out of my mother who was and is the opposite of me.
Fast forward to my teens when I went to boarding school, there must be a sign on your head when you’re an easy target, a signal, blood in the water and the sharks circle around to bite. The comments continued to eviscerate my self confidence. I started affirmations at a very young age and would recite my affirmations to sleep only to have a whole day of them being stripped off me again. And it was always the girls, the ones I thought were my friends. I remember one time I was being complimented for being pretty for a dark skinned girl or being pretty on one side of my face or something dumb and my heart was welling at the thought of these kind words. As soon as the complimenter left, this girl, who was my friend at the time stood up from her chair to meet me across the classroom to inform me of the following “he’s lying to you, don’t believe him”.
Eventually the boys started to bully me and that had the potential to become really dark, like really really dark so I drew the line. One thing I love about God is that He would always make me feel the hurt enough to develop some form of wisdom from it but never enough to be completely obliterated by it.
I remember the day I started fighting back, I had spent another day holding my head up in front of the bullies, not allowing the tears flow publicly. School had ended for the day and I ran back to my dorm and cried my eyes out. I had cried for what felt like a lifetime then a single thought came to my mind, and it changed the game – “what would my mom do”.
My mom didn’t (and till this day, does not) take sh*t from nobody. She doesn’t play games. You know not to mess with her. It’s written all over her face. She’s not the one. And so I wore her skin, her mindset and would literally imagine that the mean words hurled at me where being hurled at my mother. It worked. Like MAGIC.
It didn’t come without its difficulties, kids are mean, they could sense that I was faking it so they would test it. “Since when?” “You are growing wings o” “this same feyi?”
Well bitch yeah, actually.
I remember one time I defended myself and a friend of mine pulled me to the side to say “I’m happy for you that you’re standing up for yourself but if you ever come for me like that I will finish you”.
Be weary of the changes in human behaviour when you journey to become the best version of yourself. Take note of the people who aren’t happy for you, and the ones who are.
I continued to fight the good fight all the way up to my late teens and early 20s and it felt like the bullying had stopped completely. I had faked it until I made it. I had learnt how to decipher who was for me and who wasn’t. Who could harm me and who couldn’t. Or so I thought. I really don’t know what my obsession with having a friendship group was. I blame the FOMO of never having a friend to share a best friend necklace with – I blame the entire best friend jewellery genre, I blame social media for intoxicating me with dreams of girls trips and girls nights out, making that seem like the solution to ALL of life’s problems. I blame stupid tag lines like “find your tribe” and “girl squad”. Every now and then I would meet and make friends with some people and think, “this is it, this is my tribe, I’m finally here” then life would happen and before you know it, I’m back to being alone again. What is it about losing female friendships that hurts far worse than a breakup? The memories, the inside jokes, it all just fades. And there’s hardly ever any closure, you just have to get on with your life really quickly for fear of looking like you’re the one that lost out.
But one time, I lost what felt like all my friends at once and It punched me in the gut so deeply that I had to retreat to solitude.
In those days of solitude I checked my ego, I became closer to God and to my family. Really got to know myself. I learnt that I am kind, and sweet and insecure. I learnt that I am compassionate and I have empathy but I suck with money. I learnt that I struggle with order and time management and that I have a very unhealthy relationship with criticism because it feels like bullying and it triggers all of my defence mechanisms.
I also started to dissect a lot of my failed friendships, went line by line over what went wrong and replayed scenarios over and over and over. I asked myself hard questions, I faced the facts. And the red flags became clear to me; misaligned values, weird power dynamics, toxicity, being an enabler, being a doormat, shrinking to fit in & other stories. One thing I love about me is that I always know when to leave. I guess it’s something you pick up from being bullied as a kid, you always know when things have the potential to get dark. I remember this one friend that made me the butt of all her jokes and that became the relationship dynamic. I stopped laughing and it became a problem. So much so that she literally fabricated so many stories about me that I literally had no choice but to leave. I ended friendships for being misunderstood, for being belittled, for condescending statements when I needed applause and support. I ended probably the longest female friendship I ever had because I had just started a company, and she referred to the work I was doing as “small” and wanted me to reach or aim higher. Don’t do that, don’t belittle me as I’m trying to build myself. I am standing on what feels like one foot when it comes to my self confidence. I am putting myself out here like this and I will protect it with everything I have.
I will always be grateful for my years in solitude, they taught me to not be afraid of being alone and that sometimes being alone is a great thing. They grounded me, taught me who I was. They held me accountable, and I learnt from my mistakes. I owned who I was flaws and all and learnt that the right people will love me in spite of them. One of the biggest mistakes I ever made was that I forced myself into places I wasn’t truly loved or wanted. I realised I still wanted the girls that bullied me then to validate me now, now that I was no longer what they said I was, maybe now you would want to be my friend. Maybe now you will be kind, maybe now you will give me a seat at your table. I said these words out loud to myself and it was the weirdest thing. I realised I was still the 8 year-old girl that was being bullied for being dark skinned.
I gave myself permission to feel, I didn’t shame myself. It was my truth and I am entitled to my truth no matter how lame or weird it is. I made myself a judgement free zone, I became my own therapist in a sense and I allowed myself feel my feelings. When I started to heal, I promised myself to NEVER look for love in hopeless places within myself and outside of myself. I promised myself to only go where I am watered and not the other way around and this was the game changer for me. I started going out completely alone, to parties, movies, I took myself on dates. “Oh hey Feyi, who are you here with? Umm no one, just me”. I stopped asking friends what they thought of my hair and make up and outfits. I asked me, and if I thought I looked bomb, that was all that mattered.
During my years in solitude, I paid attention to the people who came to find me. The people who cared so deeply for me that they noticed a vacuum when I left. I was surprised by a lot of the people, my baby sisters, a lot of my male friends, people I took care of, people I didn’t think had it in them to care for me, did. I made new friends, people who had the same values as I did, people I admired for the right reasons and not the wrong ones. People who gave me love when I did them. I wrote their names down and held on to them for dear life. Till this day they remain my closest friends.
What the sum total of these experiences taught me is that self love is the most important form of love. True inward kindness is rare and I intend to spend the rest of my life giving myself that kindness I spent years looking for. I learnt and I’m still learning that kindness is a scarce commodity in the world and if you have it to give, give it freely and abundantly but do not be unwise. I learnt to be vulnerable with myself first and with people. I was never guarded to begin with so that was easy. I learnt not to take myself too seriously, I learnt not to take life too seriously. I learnt that it’s okay to wear my heart on my sleeve because I have a full understanding of the fact that I can get burnt, but it will never break me. I learnt that when people treat you with unkindness it has very little to do with you and more to do with them and what they are dealing with.
Since my experiences with bullies and bad friendships, the next time I experienced mean girls was when I started working. I’ve worked with so many broken people who make their brokenness your problem. One lesson I learnt is that after they’ve spewed the bile within themselves onto me, is to wash off the stink and leave because it’s really not you, it’s them.
I have come to learn that good sisterhood can be everything but only the good kind. If you are lucky enough to have a woman in your life that accepts, loves and supports you, it can be everything. We women know how to be there for one another in the most beautiful ways. A woman will champion, she will celebrate, she will council, she will hold you accountable, she will help, she will support, she will guard, she will fight, she will be a shoulder to cry on and a prayer partner.
When women find themselves in a good sisterhood, they say to one another “I see you, I accept you, I support you and I love you and all your quirks” giving each other permission to thrive. I don’t know what it is about it, but it’s glorious. If you are blessed to have it hold on to it as long as it feeds you and you feed it. If you don’t have it, that’s okay too, but don’t be filled with bitterness, instead, go where you are watered. Soak up all the love that you have in your life, close your eyes to the type of love you want because if you’re hungry for it, you might make stupid decisions trying to make yourself stay in or be a part of something that isn’t for you. Do not ignore the signs. If it feels off it probably is.
I will end this how I always try to end my little write ups, on a positive note that leaves you with some homework. With all relationships these are two simple words I try to love and live by. They aren’t always the easiest thing to do. Might seem like a little but it’s a lot. Apply it to all areas of your life and see the world around you change for the better.
Be KIND ✨
