Quarantine was hard for everyone but I already knew the drill. For my 6th grade, me and my family went in an RV around the country for a whole year. I won’t say I was ungrateful but 6th grade me definitely was not happy. No friends, barely any wifi and just with my family 24/7 was not what 11 year old me wanted. And it kinda sucked. It made me distant from my friends back home and even when I got back, there were only a few people who actually treated me normal or like they did back when I was home. 7th grade was really rough for me. A funny thing that happened at the time was another friend of the friend group I was in who was the same race as me moved away so I kinda just felt like the stand in. The replacement. And right when everything started to hit its groove, everything hit me at once. Family losses, quarantine, no more in person and it hit me like a truck. Everything I was starting to actually get used to was taken away from me in an instant.
In Quarantine, I used to be the friend everyone joked about. Sometimes nowadays I still am but I learned to live with it. My sense of community back then was that if I was the only one they picked on, then I was the glue of the group and I should just take it. I was a pretty sensitive kid growing up so this was no easy task for me but I persevered the best I could. Eventually it got so bad that I was even kicked out of the group by the ringleader who I found out was spreading rumors about me crying wolf to the rest of the friend group. Being kicked out, I reached out to one of my best friends who wasn’t in the group for solace and in that conversation I realized, community isn’t a massive friend group, it isn’t people genuinely bullying you for no exact reason but community is those few select people that you choose the be closest with. Now, while I only have a few friends, I can say with absolute certainty that I chose the right people. They’ve stuck by me through thick and thin and I have for them as well. So even if the title of this post is “No Community For You”, it’s only because you can’t have community thrust upon you, you need to build it around you.
Unruly Bodies 
This is such an lovely anecdote. I can’t imagine how isolating it was for you to not be surrounded by peers during such a weird stage of life. And for it to feel just as isolating when you returned, even becoming the butt of the joke. On top of that, establishing a sense of community while you’re so young and don’t have a complete idea of what it is you’re searching for, is so incredibly emotionally taxing. I’m so glad you’ve found your group now and they cherish you because you deserve it!