For as long as I can remember, I've thought that if I hold up another girl, it will one day make me weaker. I've thought that by talking about them behind their backs through group chats somehow made me the better one. I've thought that since, at some point, they have been just as cruel and nasty about me, it's okay if I don't take the high road. You see, everyone told us that if you aren't making fun of the boy in the glasses and ragged jeans, or pushing the girl that likes to read comics into the lockers, you aren't a bad person. But no one told us that in order to be a good person, you have to do more then save your insults for when a person isn't around.

It starts in middle school, calling girls sluts because their Hollister shorts didn't meet the length requirement a bunch of twelve year old girls decided was acceptable. You start calling girls "bitches" just because you've never really talked to them but instead taken another's word for it, and by the time you get to high school, you know exactly what girls you hate and which you don't, for no exact reason. Although, once boys and insecurities and cafeteria gossip come into play, no one's really safe from the mean-girl monologue that plagues teenage girls minds.

I'm afraid to admit that in my past years of high school, I've spent more time tearing girls down then holding them up. I've spent more times criticizing their homecoming dresses, then complimenting their make up that took hours. I've judged their boy troubles and devalued their personal problems instead of being understanding and sympathetic. I didn't do these things because I was heartless or didn't care, but rather because I knew when it would be my turn to talk, they would do the same thing.

As a gender, women face more obstacles then men. Sexism as a whole is already enough to battle in a lifetime without the added attacks from your sisters,(and by sisters, I mean every other girl in the world). It has become the social norm to put more effort into hating one another than liking each other. When I look at Snapchat stories, threads of snarky comments and digs fill my head. In the midst of the resentment and hate my mind is trying to process, the inner voice inside me reminds me that these girls do not deserve what I am thinking, no matter how many times they've thought the same thing towards me. As I walk down school hallways, dirty glares pass with most corners. I think of them as nothing personal. No one taught us better.

My friends and I were never taught that we would need each other. We were never taught that the other group we decided were our rivals could really be our best allies. There was no middle school seminar teaching young women that calling your friend a slut or bitch was not what true friendship was meant to be. No brochure in the nurses office informed me that the drama everyone would become so sick of, could be prevented by talking out issues instead of making them into your lunch table gossip. But most importantly, not one person told me, the girl I hate, or my best friend, that women have got to start holding each other up- protecting each other from the obstacles the world will so readily throw at them. No one taught us that we needed to love each other more than anyone else.