The Inner Ring

From my own personal experience, I know what it’s like to be inside of an inner ring. At high school, I hung out with a group of girls known as “The Volleyball Cult” because everyone in our group of friends was on the volleyball team. We had been friends for a while, but volleyball is what really brought us together. Not everyone on the volleyball team was part of this group, but we always invited the rest of the team when we did something together because we wanted our whole team to get along really well. We were a good group of girls and we always stayed out of trouble, but after discussing inner rings in class, I began to wonder if I did the right thing by being a part of this group. We never tried to exclude anybody from our group, but some our friends who were not on the team stopped hanging out with us. They were sick of us always talking about our volleyball matches or what we wanted to work on during practice, and finally they left. At the time I didn’t think we were excluding people, but now as I think back, I realize that although we let anybody join our group, it was difficult to stay unless you loved volleyball.

I also have a different experience of being a part of an inner ring, and this inner ring is my family. My family and I have someone special in our lives that decides almost everything that we do, and that special someone is my nine-year-old brother Travis who has Down syndrome. When Travis meets a new person he usually wants them to “go home”, and this makes it difficult for them to get close to our family. But when Travis gets used to them and goes special places with them, he gets excited to see them and sad when they leave. Travis doesn’t like change in his life so when he is used to seeing certain people everyday, he expects them to always be there for him. If someone wants to get close to my family, they better not be planning on leaving anytime soon. Unlike my volleyball click, this inner ring is very difficult to get into, and almost impossible to leave.