Growing up, I had no idea what a true friend was because I honestly never had one.
When I was in the first grade, I met my very first friend (outside of my cousins). Her name was Victoria and we did everything together. Sleepovers, pool parties, we even wrote letters and mailed them to each other.
But once we hit the second grade, we were in different classes. All of a sudden, Victoria would call less, and the invites to hang out ultimately stopped. Despite my efforts to reach out and stay friends, I was no longer fit to be her BFF and we eventually never spoke again.
The same thing happened in the fourth grade– having a few friends outside of school should’ve kept us close now that a classroom difference wasn’t in the picture… wrong. Once puberty hit, we eventually grew distant and we now only keep in touch with a few likes and double-taps on Facebook and Instagram.
The same thing pretty much happened again when I was in the eighth grade. A change in schools and a new phase of puberty/boyfriends made our last phone call totally awkward. Even to this day whenever we run into each other, the friendship seems forced.
How could someone be so close to you only to completely lose connection after a few life changes? Shouldn’t that help you grow closer as friends?
When life changes, people change. And because people change, their relationships change.
Once I hit college, I joined a sorority and was surrounded by lots of “friends”. Yet, my closeness with most of them was often at the expense of poking fun of how I dressed, spoke, and would do certain things. Being the tough girl that I was, I would dust the jokes off and often clap back with something to even out the hurtful words.
But the jokes always hurt. Especially coming from my “friends”.
Looking back at what I know now about college, hearing that my college friends didn’t even like me when they first met me should have been a huge red flag that our friendship wouldn’t grow very strong.
Needless to say, I have had bad experiences when it came to making friends my entire life.
Some of it was my fault (like when I chose to ditch my friends once I had a boyfriend). While others were reasons I have no idea why.
I always watched movies and TV shows showing these amazing girl friendships and would pray and dream that I could one day have that.
And because it never came, making friends became something that was super awkward, and full of protective walls around my heart to prevent me from getting hurt all over again.
I guess this is a big reason I depended on boys and relationships to fill this void that was missing in my life.