There was a friend group in my school that I always wanted to be a part of You know that one group? The people who always sit together. The people who somehow have a seat saved for each other at lunch. The people who walk around the school together, laugh about things nobody else understands, go to each other’s houses, celebrate birthdays together. I used to look at them and think, And then, somehow, I became one of them. I still remember how happy that made me. We started sitting together during lunch. During breaks. We talked about random things that probably wouldn’t even matter to us now. And then one of them had a birthday. And I went to her house. I remember thinking about that later. The girl who once wished she could be part of that group was now sitting in one of their houses, celebrating someone’s birthday. I was genuinely happy. Maybe happier than I should have been. Because for a while, I thought I had finally found my people. Time passed. And then something started feeling different. I couldn’t explain it at first. Nothing huge happened. Nobody came up to me and said, “We don’t want you here anymore.” It was smaller than that. A little silence here. A little distance there. A conversation I wasn’t included in. A moment where I felt like I was walking beside them instead of walking them. I noticed it. But I didn’t want to notice it. Because sometimes admitting that something has changed is more painful than pretending it hasn’t. Then one day, I was packing my bag after class. I looked around. They were gone. The whole group had already left. And I was still there. Alone. I don’t know why that particular moment hurt so much. Maybe because it wasn’t just about packing a bag alone. It felt like I had been left behind in more ways than one. I was disappointed. Really disappointed. To the point where I couldn’t even look at them properly afterward. They noticed. They asked me what was wrong. And for a second, something inside me said, But I didn’t. For once, I said everything. I told them how I had been feeling. I told them that I felt avoided. I told them that being left behind hurt me. And somewhere in the middle of all that, I said: I wasn’t trying to make a speech. I wasn’t trying to make them feel guilty. I just wanted them to understand that I was hurt. They apologized. They said they were sorry. They told me they didn’t mean to make me feel that way. They promised it wouldn’t happen again. And I believed them. Of course I did. They were my friends. Why wouldn’t I believe them? The next day, everything looked normal again. We were talking. Laughing. Doing what we usually did. For a moment, I thought maybe everything really was okay. And then one of them said it. In that mocking voice people use when they think something is funny. “Ohhh — she’s a human. She too has feelings.” Everyone laughed. I didn’t. I couldn’t. Because they weren’t making fun of a random sentence. They were making fun of the one thing I had trusted them enough to say. I had told them where it hurt. And the very next day, they touched exactly that place — just to make everyone laugh. I didn’t know what to say. So I said nothing. And something in me became quiet that day. Not dramatically. Nobody noticed. I didn’t walk out. I didn’t announce that our friendship was over. I just stopped being the same person around them. I talked less. I laughed less. I stopped telling them things. I stopped trying so hard to be included. And slowly, I started sitting a little farther away. Then farther. Until one day, I realized I wasn’t really part of that group anymore. And strangely enough, they didn’t ask. They didn’t ask why I had become quiet. They didn’t ask why I stopped talking the way I used to. They didn’t ask what happened. They just let me disappear from the friendship. And that was when I understood something I wish I had understood much earlier. Maybe I had spent so much time wanting to belong to that group that I never stopped to ask whether they actually wanted there. I had been so happy to finally get a place at the table that I never noticed how easily they could leave without noticing my chair was empty. For a long time, I thought the painful part was being made fun of. It wasn’t. The painful part was realizing that I had trusted people with something real, and they turned it into a joke. The painful part was realizing that after I walked away, nobody came looking for me. And maybe that was the answer I had been looking for all along. I wasn’t their first choice. I wasn’t their second. I wasn’t even a backup friend. Maybe I was simply someone who happened to be there. And I had mistaken being included for being valued. I don’t hate them. I don’t even think about them every day anymore. But sometimes I remember that girl who used to look at their group from a distance and dream about sitting with them. And I wish I could go back to her. Not to tell her, But to tell her something much simpler. Because sometimes the people you spend so much time trying to belong to are the very people who teach you that belonging should never have to be begged for. And that was the last time I said, “I am a human. I have feelings too.” Not because I stopped having feelings. But because I finally stopped explaining them to people who had already decided they were funny. They stopped seeing me long before I stopped seeing them. And it is completely fine. Maybe emptying your current room also means making space for new people, new conversations, new jokes. And maybe that’s the whole point of living. Maybe growing means learning to choose yourself, every single time. AFTERALL I TOO WAS A HUMAN- I TOO HAD FEELINGS.