To feel my school friends held me back ?

[OrganicPlane]

I went to a middle class, non mainstream school and the girls I went to school with were all very immature, lacking in confidence and precious. All their mothers knew each other - they were teachers.

They seemed to hate big when I - previously fat, lost weight and gained more confidence.

They almost wore their lack of confidence as a badge of honour :

”Oh looooook!!! I can’t even go and ask for something in a shoooopppp!” (Aged 20)

i have to say I’m only slightly exaggerating with the above example

I feel the girls I went to school with did shape my personality a bit and it’s been hard to break free/gain confidence. AIBU?

You are not wrong, unfortunately

Yes ok - your last but one paragraph you’ve got a very valid point

Was there a particular reason you didn’t go to a mainstream school? Presumably if you had SEN, then the other pupils would have too, which would explain some of their behaviour perhaps? Your Mum sounds like the strangest person in all of this though.

I'm 10 years older than you and can relate up to your story a little bit. There is a notion in the English culture that being shy and unconfident makes you a better person. Apparently it means that you are more sensitive, more fragile, etc more 'feminine'. But what I don't understand is how you have held onto this idea till the age of 51. Surely you have worked out that you had to emotionally stand more on your own two feet? or hasn't the University of Life knocked this silly notion out of your head? I agree with the pp who said that your mum was more the problem for eavesdropping on your conversations at 20, you should have told her to fuck off!

Absolutely no SEN - think close knit religious school rather than area comprehensive

if anything this school had a MUCH above average ability level from aged 11-18

@OrganicPlane are you still in touch with your parents?

I think the people around us do shape our personalities to a degree but surely not every single person except you was like that? Maybe you were hanging around with the wrong crowd. I also think once you left school things would have changed unless you continued to hang out with them.

OP I know what you mean even though I think you perhaps didn’t word it so well.

I made friends through my kids’s school with a woman who was a ‘popular’ girl in my year though I barely knew her at school. I was not a popular girl in my year. I was babyish, over protected, taking no pride in my appearance (I would have greasy hair, didn’t take care of my hygiene, never did anything rebellious like stay out late).

Went to a school reunion with my popular-at-school friend and it hit me like a ton of bricks - I WANTED to be more like the popular gang but the friends I had in school would sneer or eye roll or make comments if one day I decided to come in wearing make up, or spoke about getting a nicer hairstyle, or going out late. The reunion threw up old dynamics and I realised I was held back because I was scared of upsetting my friends by being more like other people. It made me feel like I’d lost out on a lot of experiences, and even at the reunion my old school friends were making comments about the fact I was “now in the popular crowd”. You just can’t please some people

At some point we stop navel gazing, thinking other people held us back or obstructed us, and we take responsibility for ourselves.

In your 50s you've surely had a life full enough of choices to accept that you are the one steering this ship, haven't you? It's such a passive and defeatist mindset to think "it was the friends from school" or "it was my difficult background".

Own yourself, stand taller and look forward rather than back.

It’s been decades. Take some accountability.

Is this something that's been bothering you for years or something you've just thought of OP?
You describe these girls as immature, lacking in confidence and precious yet you think they shaped your personality a bit. That makes no sense at all. You later say that they seemed very sheltered to you but you let your mother choose your friends when you were twenty. An adult.
You seem to look down on these girls but you were exactly the same as them and it seems that all these years later, you haven't changed.
OP, take responsibility for yourself. If you were held back by anyone, it was yourself. If you are struggling to accept that, then maybe you'd benefit from finding someone to talk it over with.
I hope you can move on from this.

Further to my earlier post, I agree with this - I wish I had more gumption as a teenager and I always teach my DD to never hold back parts of herself and never let anyone surprise who she wants to be.

People are being harsh. You haven’t said you blame your old friends or don’t take responsibility for your life. It IS interesting to think back to how people in your early life shaped you. It can make you feel a loss of what you might have been or regret that you didn’t see things differently at the time. But you were young and it sounds like you were heavily influenced by a sheltered upbringing.

No I don’t live in the same area I grew up in

my mum died a long time ago

my mum was also alcoholic and controlling so I do sympathise ❤️

well done on the progress you’ve made - that sounds excellent!

Agree with what you say - particularly your point about building relationships outside of parental control

What have you done after you graduated?

I can’t argue with this. It’s so true

I guess I’d be looking at what you want to do in the future rather than looking back at the past. There’s nothing you can do about your school years now.
However you are only in your early 50’s you still have plenty of time to change and achieve things you have not achieved.
I feel that you need to write down some things you want to do and come up with a plan on how you will achieve them. For example I have decided that I’d like some more local arty friends so I’m going to do some arty workshops locally to see if I can find anyone that I might click with. It’s a bit scary to go to things on your own but if it’s some kind of workshop you all have something in common straight away.
Try to figure out what you want to do and then take a risk to do it.
You are not going to change your life if you don’t try. Good luck 🤞

Thank you

this gives me hope

why not grow up and take responsibility for yourself?
I went to a school where girls had to do domestic science, typing and office practice,
out of a large year group (around 500+ pupils), it was suggested to one girl that she applied to university, a couple teacher training and one nursing, mostly discouraged from doing O levels in favour of CSEs. The careers guidance for the rest of us was largely did you want to work in a shop or an office - and I was in the top stream.

I qualified as an accountant a few years after leaving, and became a finance director before I was 30 and now have an MBA and an MSc, No real contact with many of them much after school - but a few of them got in touch when there some kind of school friends reunited thing that my brother joined, most of them seemed to live in the same town - but if that what's make them happy, good for them.

You went to school with them - you aren't bound to them for life. If you haven't achieved what you want to, it's down to you, not them.

True enough

well done for achieving what you did

Plenty went wrong

but as others said it’s now my problem to fix

I can definitely relate to this sort of thing.

in my 20s the girls I was friendly with met up with a few blokes - not from our school - and I was enjoying some banter with the blokes and one of these girls was saying

“well done” every time I said something witty

Yes you’re right

Thing is I ‘let’ my mum choose my friends up to aged 22 because she had history of being an aggressive, abusive alcoholic and I was scared of confronting her

They have both passed