As I was sitting at dinner listening to her interrupt everyone's conversation, and one-up everything they say, I was exhausted and I truly felt bad for her. It must be EXHAUSTING to be her. I can't imagine spending your entire life looking for ways to make yourself look better than everyone around you, even your friends. This is the moment I realized you're not a mean person, you're a terribly sad person.
Everyone has one of these girls in their friend group. She is the one who jumps into your story about breaking your foot with the story about her breaking her leg. She's the one that can't be happy about your good test grade because your classes "aren't as hard as hers." Yes, it is frustrating and yes, it drives everyone crazy so why does she do this?
There are only two reasons I can come up with: either this person truly and honestly thinks that they are God's gift to earth, or they have terrible self-esteem and need the reassurance of others to go on with their day. In my experience, It has always been the latter.
As frustrated as I was with our friend group's 'person' I simply felt bad for how insecure she was with herself. So I would go along with it. I would let her interrupt all of my stories and make fun of me and my friends' majors and future plans. I would try my hardest every day to ensure that she felt like she was better than everyone around her and happy. We got to a point where we stopped sharing good news about jobs and grad school with her, because what was the point?
It wasn't until I was getting ready for an event that our 'person' would be at that I realized, I didn't want to go. I didn't want to spend my Friday night trying so hard to be friendly to someone who was so terrible to me and my friends. I wasn't doing a good deed by letting her act in such an ugly fashion towards us. I was enabling her negative attitude.
However bad I felt for her, this was no way to live MY life, this was a toxic relationship. One of the ways that college differentiates itself from high school is that, if you don't want to see someone everyday, you DO NOT have to.
For all of the girls with one of these girls in their group, you DO NOT have to be their friend. You can only feel bad for her for so long until you realize that you and your friends' sanity and happiness might be worth more. If someone is going to be an unpleasant person towards you, then move on. Trust me you don't need it, and maybe just maybe your 'person' will realize how off putting their comments always are.
Well at least one can only hope, a narsicist isn't exactly the best at self evaluations.
