syntheticsensations

I have this friend.
Let's call her .. I dunno, Tulip?

Tulip and I met in the office of our (my ex) new school. We were both new, recently having relocated from another country. We spoke English, liked some of the same stuff as me, and it was cool, even though she was two years ahead of me.

I stayed close to her, not knowing how to - not actually wanting - to integrate myself into the new culture and their cliques. It was fine and everything. We hung out, had sleepovers, saw movies together, etc, just like normal friends, and I thought she was great.

It's only now, after I've been away and able to see her from a distance, that I realise how try hard she was.

Tulip pretends to be all hip and cool. (Who uses the word "hip" these days?) She tries to dress well and look nice, and what's wrong with that, right? Every time I'd talk to her, she'd try to make out that her life was better than mine. That she had more money, better things than I did. But I knew better.

Our mothers had become friends, and her mum would complain to mine about how they had no money while simultaneously pretending to be more rich than we are. It's kind of WTF. One second she'd be bragging about how much her husband makes a month (say, a lot) and then the next she's asking my mother for money because she can't afford to buy groceries.

Their family is a bit disfunctional, the mother and the [two] kids do nothing but swear at each other and the father just seems to not want anything to do with them. The mum would wait on him hand and foot every time he came home from work, and no one was allowed to eat until he went to bed.

Tulip would try to act smarter than me, when in fact, she isn't. She'd say she was better at English than me, speaking in broken and grammatically-incorrect terms, whereas my English was my first language.

I don't really give a shit about that, what really bugs me is the trying-to-be-superior part.

If I was over at her place, on my laptop or straightening my hair, she'd start to pratter on about how crap or old my stuff was, and how much better or newer hers was - when I knew the exact opposite.

Also, she'd copy me a lot. She'd see me having something cool, and then she'd go and buy the exact same thing and then take heaps of photos of herself using/wearing it and post it online on Facebook, making out like she had the thing first, knowing I didn't use Facebook and wouldn't flaunt my own stuff.

Whenever we go out, she pretends to know everything and be all outgoing, even though when confronted to do the actual thing she'd be saying she would, she wouldn't.

I know that last part didn't make sense, I just got a bit carried away, but it just makes me so angry!

You might think I'm mean or even cruel to pick at her like this, but it's just not cool, y'know?

(Note to self :: Use less commas.)