“81 other people are better than you” just keeps going through my head, and it’s like a mantra of failure.

Over and over, I see pictures of their happiness, acceptance, and messages of congratulations, so every day I am reminded of the number of people that have been selected to be a part of something I cannot gain entry to. I cannot get in no matter how many clubs I join, no matter how hard I try, no matter my grades, my involvement, or my attitude – I simply haven’t accumulated the correct components to make the grade for sisterhood. One of those components being a friendship with a sister who will vouch for me, who will say “She’s good enough.” I have not yet made a single friend who would stand up for me in a crowd, and say to others that I am worth getting to know and that I am worth giving effort to.

How truly awful to feel like you are not good enough to be loved by that group, to know that you are only one of 29 who, for some unknown reason, were not liked or went unnoticed. I am the bottom 26 percent of girls on campus, according to the votes of a majority of my peers. On this campus, there are now more than 200 girls who would not call me “sister.” How alone it feels to know my peers would not choose me to grow with, to mentor, or allow into their inner circle.

I’m a perpetual outsider. When you are an only child, more often than not you long for a sibling. Why do only children look on the sibling relationship and crave it? Who would ever see a bond forged of love with all its secrets, stories, and support and not desire it? Since my freshman year, I have tried so hard to earn – not win – a bond. I have run across campus in the middle of the night to give help to a girl who was in pain but sincerely disliked me, because my house had a freezer and hers didn’t. My heart tells me to be generous, to give when I have less than nothing, and to give more of myself than others might, so that when I have reached my lowest point, someone may see the good in me and give some words of encouragement that rekindles my spirit.

I feel like I have checked off all your boxes for outside things. I do community service, I get nothing less than a B and I don’t go to parties to be caught doing things we are told we shouldn’t. I take leadership roles, attend community events, raise money for charity. I volunteer around school and across the globe. I recycle, I give my vacation time to volunteer. I am there for strangers, I compliment freely, I do not dress slovenly.

I feel like its my insides. Those are what’s wrong. That has to be the answer, right? It’s my smile or my laugh that offends you, it’s my excitable nature or quick temper – something inside me, that which is inherently me, that is what is wrong. How do I change me?

But then the return of the bigger question: Do I really want to be a part of something that asks me to change the very fabric which creates me? If I truly desire to be a part of the collective then yes, I have to lose, give up, destroy what makes me, me, in order to fit into the order that is made up of only you.

I have tried for years now to change myself, make sure to like every single one of your Facebook pages and attend your events in order to get noticed, but I never seem to make a dent. I friended every new and current member, even the alumni. I tried being nonchalant in my pursuits and that also didn’t garner me any of your much sought after affections. I do my best to perform as you expect, to wear and be what you’d expect, to be with the people that also filter through your social circle even.

None of my efforts have made any difference, and my self-esteem is suffering for it. I will graduate college less of me, less than who I started out as, because I am simply seeking a bond that will not be given and I will be more alone because of it. All I wanted was to be a sister to you, but I’ll never be anyone’s sister because I am so unlikeable that I cannot get one single person to say that I am worth it.