The Little Girl

It's more of a moral story but I wrote this after being inspired by one girl at my school. I hope you enjoy it and that it maybe changes how you think.

Once upon a time there was a little girl who was excited for her first day at school. She ran down the stairs and ate her breakfast as fast as she could so she could go and make new friends. She mithered her mum to take her early so she would have the best chance to get to know everyone. So into the car she got and talked to her favourite teddy bear all the way, telling him how many friends she’d have by the end of the day and how she’d invite her new friends to come over and meet him.
When she arrived, she ran onto the playground and at once started to talk to the other children. All day she went round and talked to everyone in her class and by the time it was time for home she thought she had made so many new friends. Her mum asked her “Have you had fun today?” and she replied with such eagerness and delight, “Yes, mummy! I’ve made lots of friends!” Her mum laughed as she fastened her into the car and they drove home.
For the first few years of primary school, when everyone is friends with everyone else. She had a good time and invited all her friends to her house for sleepovers and play-days. But when the girls were old enough to realise that some girls are ‘prettier’ than others, the little girl was singled out because she wasn’t ‘pretty enough’. Everyone she thought was her friend had left her because they didn’t want to be seen with her in front of the ‘pretty’ girls. This lasted all the way through for the rest of primary with some people even forgetting the original reason they didn’t like her and beginning to resent her just for her unpopularity.
When it came to move on to high school, she got her hopes up and prayed, and dreamed, and wished that she would have a new chance to start over and try again. But no, she wasn’t allowed, the ‘pretty’ girls spread rumours about her that made people she hadn’t even met develop the same opinion of her as her primary school classmates. She would try to start a conversation with someone and they’d just ask “Why are you talking to me?” and walk off. The no-longer little girl became very upset when she got home and realised that maybe she just wasn’t meant to have friends. That night, she hugged her favourite teddy bear so hard and cried herself to sleep, hoping that she wouldn’t have to wake up to another friend-less day.
She hung onto her lonely existence for five more years, certain that college would bring about a change for her, that she’d finally feel like she mattered to someone, that when she fell over or was upset, that someone would care about her, and not just laugh. When other people dreamed about relationships, jobs, exams, money, houses and cars, she just dreamed to have a friend.
And, to her great surprise and excitement, she did. One girl who knew what truly mattered in a friend, accepted her, talked to her and laughed with her, not at her. She finally, after over ten years of loneliness, rejection and depression, found someone to be her friend.
But why, why did she have to wait ten years? Why didn’t someone step in and say, ‘this is wrong, everyone should have someone’? It’s because the ‘pretty’ girls, and even boys, decide what goes on in schools today, they decide who gets friends and who doesn’t, who’s popular and who isn’t. And they decided, all those years ago, even after witnessing her friendliness, that she wouldn’t, because she wasn’t pretty enough.