Letters to the Editor
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Energy-sucking people
Cary's right about people, many look to others to fulfill their needs for love and attention while giving nothing in return. Recognize who is only interested in sucking energy and avoid their traps. If the other person only wants an ear to bend, that is disrespectful. It is taking without giving.
You sound like a marvelous person. Take the first part of Cary's advice, but DON'T go back to that bar. It IS high school, but now you are college-level. It has been a wonderful learning experience for you. You have grown tremendously and gained much confidence. Now take it to the next level, as Cary intimated.
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You have got to please your peeps!
You are Charlie. You are beautiful and carefree. You are popular and smart and your nod, glance and touch are the affirmations that all of these sorry loser drunks are looking for! This is the price of being popular. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, and in the land of the drunk, the sober one is the designated driver. Seriously, these people are drunks and have no lives. You are their example, their leader. Their goddess. So when you go in there, make sure to say hi to each and every one of them. It's Cheers! And Norm is the most popular one of all. But nobody really cares that he cannot stand to see his wife (Vera), can't pay his bartab and keeps getting fired from one job after another. He's fat. He's Norm! The only advantage he has in his life is that everyone likes him. So just thank your lucky starts you aren't Cliffy.
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Sounds familiar
I am well acquainted with your situation, if not in a bar, then in other groups. I have a special talent for drawing the ire of people who have expectations like your bar friends. They will see you how they want to see you: cheerful, fun, lovely, humorous, gregarious, sexy... whatever they decide.
Consistency is one thing, living as a type is another. Sometimes you take on roles you may not be aware of and that is how people frame you. If you act like yourself, a fluid real live human being and they don't like your behavior, well that falls under the category of 'not your problem'.
Isn't this how we distinguish the true friends from the pack? Those who see us as we really are and still love us are the keepers.
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That stale reek.
My experience tells me that when one becomes an object of desire by those in a group that several reactions can evolve. There is the type of hero worship that you have experienced and there can be a more virulent discrediting against the hero. As Cary suggested groups are dynamic, even mercurial, and perhaps easily steered to their greatest potential, dull mediocrity, or into an alarming primeval devolution until they reflect the lowest common denominator. See: mob rule.
It sounds like you are able to inspire people to admire you at a group level, that always feel good doesn't it? But if you accept group adulation as credible then be prepared for the often over correction in group think. This is when adulation or as you call it "popularity" turns to an overwhelming negative response. Look at our political process, whew.
A long time ago I asked one such newly turned hostile person why she seemed so intent on tearing me down. She replied that if I didn't want to be torn down I shouldn't have climbed up on that pedestal to begin with. Good lesson I think.
Now, get out of the bar and find people who are spending their free time in more humanitarian or constructive intellectual interests. Come on... If you were at the bar for one drink, the average legal driving limit, you wouldn't be there long enough or often enough to become one of it's princesses. So what are you really doing there? And why do you euphemistically call it, "girls night out"? Don't "girls" do something else besides hang out in a bar when they are out?
Also I am compelled to state the obvious, Cheers was a Television e n t e r t a i n m e n t ! Real life in a bar lifestyle is much more drunk, unsavory, and depressing. And it usually stinks of stale alcohol, no matter how shiny it's surface. Your audience won't miss you for long I promise. I was a bartender for over six years in my misspent youth. When closing down a bar the lights go up, the chimera recedes, and that stale reek tells the rest of the story. (Sorry Paul Harvey.)
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disappear into the ether
LW's social environment has simply gone stale. The other bar-goers have comodified her and she has outgrown them. Simple solution: find a new hangout.
P.S. To the LW, it caught my eye how you said you lost a bunch of weight painlessly and effortlessly (or something close to that). If you really do mean "effortlessly" - as in, didn't change your eating or exercise habits at all - just in case, you might want to get a physical and make sure you don't have a medical condition. Otherwise, great for you!
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A different tack.
It probably is a good idea for you to take a little break from the bar. A month, two, three. If you don't go, you may even find that you are less interesting in returning. You may find another activity or another place to spend your time. But, if you do want to go back, you need to make (1) a change in strategy and (2) a small attitude adjustment to effectively deal with the social vampires who seek to drain you.
The change in strategy is to stop trying to address the needs of those whose casual company you keep. It's not possible. Instead, deflect. Sally comes up and whines because you haven't acknowledged her yet? Forget about answering the words that come out of her mouth - the bottom line is that Sally wants attention.
So give her a little! Which brings us to the change in attitude. Adopt a light, casual demeanor. Smile, tell Sally she looks wonderful, ask about her job/kids/life, smile at the answer, tell her it was great to see her and move on. Don't be fake, just be breezy and brief.
Apply the foregoing as needed. You'll have to use it a lot more in the beginning; hopefully the masses will find something else to grouse about when you diffuse the drama.
Good luck!!
P.S. You do have to accept that you will just not be able to please some of the people at the bar. But this should help make it a lot more bearable.