Camping Drama

Hey Friends!

I just got back from a two week long course in Northern Ontario where I was creating a geologic map, and tracing a small gold deposit. There were about 90 people on the trip, and it started out awesome. I was so excited to be out in the field with my friends! That would be until the third day when I was walking across a rockface and slipped down the cleavage plane. And broke my ankle.

I didn't know it was broken until yesterday when I went to the hospital because the pain was getting worse. So I continued to hike on it for ten days, which was probably a stupid decision on my part.

They had to change the area my partner, we'll call her Tee, and I were working on. Simply because I was walking at the quarter of the pace of a regular human being, and wouldn't be able to map a square kilometre in four days. So Tee and I did a more specific area half that size.

Anywho, fast forward to the last couple of days of the trip. And something was off. I was living in a cabin, which I organized, with my four best girlfriends -- who at the beginning of the trip didn't know each other, and I wanted us all to be friends.

I felt like they were ignoring me. But I was like "Heather, don't be stupid. Why would your friends purposely avoid you and exclude you. That's just mean. They're probably just worried about your foot and are trying to give you time to rest."

LOL NO. No they were avoiding me.

Things escalated on the second last day of the trip. We had to drive back you see, and myself, and my roommate Melanie (she was one of the girls in my cabin) were driving. Literally all of the girls in our cabin got in the car with Melanie. All of them. So I drove for five hours to Parry Sound with 5 international students who didn't speak english so well, and another friend of mine who saw I was driving alone he hopped in.

I told myself at the time, that it was nothing. They had spent a lot of the time on the trip together and were bonding. So if they were having a fun ride home, as much as I'd like to have fun too, that'd be fine with me. So I didn't say anything.

Parry Sound is the halfway point between where we were mapping, and our university. We were staying the night in two different motels. On the drive up you were supposed to come up with who you were rooming with, you needed a group of four.

While they were riding in the same car together, I wasn't worried. I was like "Yah, there's four of them, but they won't let me room alone. They'll find a way to make two separate rooms. We'll split into 2 and 3."

NO LOL

Instead I got to the hotel only to find that I'd been sent to a room with three random guys who I had never talked to. Because they were rooming together. There was a lot of drinking on this trip. And I knew there'd be a lot of drinking that night. So pardon me if I don't want to room and share a bed with a drunk dude I don't know and didn't want to know me.

I started crying, I did. It was starting to become obvious that they were purposefully excluding me. But I dropped my shit off in the room, and told myself that I'd feel better with food. The liquor store was closing early (6pm!) so I decided to start there first.

I ran into the four of them. And immediately asked if we could put three people in a double bed or if I could sleep on the floor and I was immediately shot down.

"Well you knew the rooms were in fours, so I don't know why you didn't find people." They replied, shrugging me off. I tried to explain that I thought they would break up the group. So one person didn't have to sleep alone with three people they didn't know. They told me that that was stupid.

So I pulled one of my friends aside, we can call her Marie, and I straight up asked her what I had done to apparently offend them. She told me that I was rude, and that I made her feel stupid, and that they all just needed a break.

I didn't have any thoughts. Why would my friends ignore me instead of tell me that I was being a bitch? I think I was in state of disbelief when I got back in the car and called my mom crying.

Eventually, I did go eat. I called up my friend Ben and we went to McDicks and ate fries. And I cried a lot.

Ben was in a room with three other guys that I knew pretty well. And they offered me one of the beds in their room, even though they didn't know what was going on. I slept on the floor though, I didn't want to be a problem.

I still can't believe that my friends would do that. I would never ever exclude someone. Especially like that. If I have a problem with someone I am not immature, and I tell them straight to their face like I did that day. Every time they ignored me I felt like I needed to try harder to participate, or to be louder.

I figured out eventually what they were talking about. We had two major assignments to do. For the first one Melanie measured everything wrong, and when I caught the error it was 1am. And we had to stay up until 4am to fix it. The second time, was the final project of the map. Once again we stayed up until 4am, even though it wasn't due until late afternoon the next day.

Throughout both of these times I said constantly that I wanted to go to bed and do it in the morning. My friends know that I go to bed early. Like 11pm latest. And it's because I don't function, at all when I'm tired. I wanted to go to bed, get up early, and fix it. But no. I was out voted. There's a few other times where I had to point out major mistakes, but I think if the project is worth 50% it's probably worth it.

I was tired, and my ankle was dying -- it's broken after all. So I was probably pretty snippy and bitchy at times. But they were immature, childish, and catty. And I don't know if I can forgive them for that.

Do you think they were justified. I know you don't know the whole story. But I can't see someone's actions like that ever being justified.