Sad Girls and the Boys that Love Them

The most memorable and probably note worthy moment in my mom’s thirteen (and continuous) relationship with her boyfriend was when I was eight and he punched her in the face and threw her down a flight of stairs. I watched this all happen on the safety of the couch in the living room while crying, screaming, and him throwing a glass beer bottle at the wall directly behind me. I remembered the shattered glass hitting my skin and cutting the side of my face, the beer soaking my clothes. I’ve hated beer and the smell of it since that day. 

But, I didn’t let this define me. 

He locked her in the basement and taunted her through the door while I called the cops and he was escorted out of the house. Mom told me he would never be in our lives again. She was so sorry. He was back in our lives a week later.

Still, I refused to let this define me.

It wasn’t until high school that I had this advice given to me by one of the best teachers I’ve ever had. I was good at hiding my feelings. It’s something that I’ve always been good at and not letting things in my life get to me too much. I usually took things at face value and never reflected on it too heavily. However, for one whole week, I wasn’t someone who looked at the negative thinking of a way to make it positive and getting over it. There was a week when my mom was in the hospital and I couldn’t be there because she didn’t want me there. There was a whole week where if someone even looked at me for too long, I was crying. I would skip class and just stay in the back of Hornbuckle’s class and read all the J.D. Salinger books he handed me. He knew not too push me, but one day at lunch just looked at me and said the words that I still heed the advice of:

  “Mack, you can either learn from this moment, take it for what it is, a really shitty moment in time, or you can let this moment define you and let it eat at you until you can’t recognize yourself. Don’t become one of those sad girls. You’re so much more than that.”

So, I didn’t become a sad girl. I didn’t become someone who feeds off the attention of others and just wants sympathy in the form of ears that listen and hands that hold. I never wanted anyone to feel sorry for me or give me that look that all people give to sad girls. As if they are fragile. As if they can’t handle situations because of shitty situations. 

  It was during this time that I learned that there is girls out there that feed off this attention. Where they take advantage of certain periods of their life that they label as “the hardest ever” and make a new persona based off that moment. They suck the life out of that moment. Drain it of all it’s emotional depth and a sad girl is formed. 

Types of Sad Girls

The sad girl’s parents got divorced at a young age, so she’s holding onto all the anger of that moment even though it really didn’t effect her in a negative fashion because she is loved by each parent in equal fashion. 

The sad girl’s boyfriend cheated on her with someone that is close to her, so she feels that all relationships with anyone (boy or girl) is doomed and will forever feed off that moment. 

The sad girl was bullied when she was in middle school for being fat or having acne. This experience has made her the self conscious sad girl, who will never get over those three years of middle school ever. 

There are many more I could add to the list, but they all add up to the fact that these are experiences, although tough in their own way, that one can learn from and grow as a person. As cliche as that sounds. Why would you let something dumb that happened in your life morph you into someone who can’t get over things?

Unfortunately, I was friends with two sad girls in high school who wanted attention by others so badly, that they clung to the other so much that they both drowned in their bullshit. They were the girls who went through the “emo” phase in middle school and high school or listened to “scene” music while painting their nails black and trying to look as mysterious as possible.

  I didn’t know it at the time, but being around them made me feel worse about myself. Being friends with these girls made me feel like the things that I was facing or the things that I was going through couldn’t have been nearly as bad as theirs because they cried all the time and they cut their wrists. They made it known to me that they didn’t care about my problems because theirs were much more important. 

   
  Sad girls.

I soon learned that these girls were delusional and just did most of these things because it was a fad and, for some god awful reason, boys were interested in those girls. They were more interested in the girls who seemed to have some dark past. A girl who was sad all the time. Mostly because they wanted to fix them and be their knight in shining armor. Mostly because the sad girls were more likely to give them a blowjob in the back of their car. 

Most of the boys didn’t realize the work they had to put in to be with these girls. These boys thought that being involved with the girls was going to be easy. The girls just wanted attention. They wanted to feel loved. But, once the sad girls got their way, the boys realized that the girls needed more than attention, they needed the guy. Everything about the guy. They needed more guys. They needed something the guys couldn’t give them.

Sad girls and the Boys that Love Them. A fairy tale that will never work. Because the girls don’t know what they want. No girl does. We wallow back and forth and think we want a nice guy. Then, we get a nice guy and that’s not what we want. 

Sad girls use this logic and it escalates. They hurt and morph the boys that love them. They do it on purpose. They make sure the boy is ruined before disposing of him and then moving on to the next boy who will love her.

I’ve seen this manipulation happen to a number of boys by one friend. One friend who I fear won’t ever learn her lesson and just continue feeding off the attention of boys because she is a sad girl. A sad girl with a mom and dad that loves her. Great friends. A good family, but for some reason, that was never enough. 

They think she is interesting with this dark past. What could be the harm in her? She’s beautiful with her blonde hair and dimples. Her easy laugh and witty comebacks. And then she’ll pull the sleeves of her long shirt up and they’ll see the small scars. 

      Sad girl. Boom.

      She’s outgoing and nothing can go wrong between the two of them, until she starts thinking that he isn’t giving her the attention she deserves. Or she morphs this manifestation of the boy being with someone else and this fantasy slowly becomes her reality, when in fact, she’s just bored with him. She’s bored of this boy who cannot handle her roller coaster of emotions until he morphs into a sad boy. 

 
      I love my friend. I think she’s brilliant and beautiful. I think she’s funny and insanely smart and far more interesting than me, but I also hate her and her sad girl routine. I hate that I fell for the routine as well and let her drag me into her shithole for years. I hate that she wasn’t a good friend, still isn’t a good friend. That when I told her of people that I was interested in, she went after them because she could. And I’d let her. Let her win because no one would be interested in me over her. That was a fact. 

 
     Sad girls always win.

The worst one and most interesting boy she picked was someone who I was intrigued by first. Someone who probably doesn’t even realize that he falls for sad girls. Someone who doesn’t know that because I never bothered to tell him of her sad girl routine. How I was interested first, which instantly made her interested. That she would tell me all the stories between the two of them, some things that I believed and others that I knew weren’t true. She did this to hurt me and I wouldn’t talk to him because she was with him, and that wasn’t allowed. 

There are rules when you’re friends with sad girls and that is one. Don’t dare talk to the guy they are currently involved with or she’ll make your life hell. Manipulation and guilt are the sad girls specialities. 

But then a surprising thing happened, he switched the roles on the sad girl. He wasn’t available all the time and I had to hear about that. He was sleeping with someone else, and I had to listen to her cry for a whole day before she met another boy. When she left for college and knew that I became friends with the guy, she made sure to tell me that he contacted her everyday. Called her to tell her that he missed her and that he loved her. She did this to make sure I stayed away. Putting me in my place, which she did.

But, the thing about sad girls and the boys that love them is that the love isn’t real. It’s a fantasy. Both parties are putting on this facade and dancing around the real issues. No one is expressing how they really feel and doing everything in their power to fuck the other one up. Sad girls are built on attention and control while boys who are in love with sad girls just want someone who relies solely on them. It’s a mind game that they are both going to lose.

So, fuck you sad girls and fuck you boys that love them. Grow up and stop feeding on the hate of the past. Grow up and learn from your mistakes and your parents mistakes and your friends mistakes. Learn that you’re in charge of your own future and your own mind. You don’t need to rely on others and their attention to survive in this world, that’s codependency and sadness wrapped in a person. 

Fuck you, sad girls who broke the hearts of the boys who loved you and just wanted to help you. Fuck you for making them not believe in love any longer.