When I was 15 on a Saturday I called every one of my friends and none of them answered. I probably called 12 kids, nothing. So I called Mark's mom and she said Mark was over at Blake's house. I called Blake's house, nothing. So I decided to get in my mom's car and drive over to Blake's just to see if anyone was there. I knew it would be weird showing up at a friend's house without letting them know I would come over, but I was getting concerned. Why couldn't I get in touch with anyone?
I rolled up to his house and walked around back where there was a living room with a glass sliding door to the backyard. I walked up to the door and saw every single one of my friends sitting inside watching a movie. All 12 of the guys I had been calling all day sitting in there with their phones, clearly had been ignoring me. I was the only one of the group not there.
When they saw me, no one jumped up to let me in. They all kind of looked around at each other like, "What the fuck?" Finally, Blake slowly got up and opened the door. I walked in and sat down and it was silent. I could hear some guys whispering, saying things like, "Tell him to leave," and "He can't just show up like that." I pretended not to hear and just stared at the TV like everything was fine, but I knew exactly what was going on.
I had been denying it for weeks, but it was plainly obvious now. I was no longer a part of my group of friends. They didn't like me anymore. I was out.
I'm sure there were reasons: I had jaw surgery that summer and missed a lot of social activity, my face looked weird, I started taking ADD medicine and was acting weird, everyone else was starting to have girlfriends and I didn't have one, I lost a lot of weight after surgery and quit the basketball team, I started seeing a therapist for depression. Somehow, I had stopped being cool. I wasn't the funny popular kid I was in 8th grade.
The week before, a few of the guys had brough beer over to my house while my parents were home, and I knew that if my dad found out we would be fucked. So I told my mom, who was like, "Okay, just make sure everyone spends the night in the rec room and I'll make sure your dad doesn't come upstairs." I made the mistake of telling my friends that my mom knew we had beer. "Why did you tell her?! We're going to get in trouble!! You're such a pussy faggot! She's going to call our parents and we'll be grounded!" I guess that was the final straw and they decided I was no longer one of their friends.
That was it. I had been at this school since I was in Kindergarten. These were the only friends I knew and now they all rejected me. I sat there in awkward silence while they all whispered about how to get rid of me. I could hear everything that was being whispered around me. Finally, after 30 minutes of silent tension, the movie ended. I got up and just walked out.
It's almost 15 years later. I'm very close friends now with a lot of the guys in that room. We all graduated high school together and eventually I patched some of the relationships. But that was the single loneliest moment of my life and I'll never get over it.