Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
Growing up I had no close friends. I grew up watching shows with beautiful friendships that were deep and meaningful. It was something that I had always wanted; to be able to call someone my best friend. A lot of the friendships I did have were all surface level and were not the deep and intimate friendships I was craving. I remember coming home from school and crying to my parents about how my ‘friends’ would always leave me out. I was extremely shy throughout my childhood and I made myself a path for people to walk all over.
Making friends in general is extremely hard nowadays. I find it so ironic how connected we are by social media. And yet how disconnected we are from reality. I also think that friendships have lost their meaning, especially for my generation. It makes me really uncomfortable how people are so comfortable trash talking about people they call friends. It’s also common nowadays for people to bond over gossip, which is the worst foundation for friendships to be built upon.
Growing up with no close friends has taught me a lot about who I am. It’s also made me experience things I am not too proud of. It is through these experiences that I am able to extract the lessons I have learnt. And it is those lessons that I will be sharing with you in this post.
1. Letting people go
I truly believe that we should always try our best to be there for others. But, we need to create a healthy balance between being there for ourselves and being there for others. If somebody wanted to be in your life as much as you wanted them to be, they would make an effort.
However, the harsh reality is that people are not always going to stay in your life. And the even harder reality is that it is our responsibility to know when we should let them go.
From experience, I know that this is easier said than done. But, constantly chasing people and trying your hardest to make them stay will only hurt you in the long run. When I lost touch with my college friends I was devastated. It felt like I had lost something good. But if I’m being totally honest with myself, constantly chasing them was tiring me out more than I would have liked to admit. I was setting myself up for disappointment.
When we are young we are taught to respect others. But we are never taught how to respect ourselves. When I am constantly trying to prove to people that I am worth their time and attention, I am disrespecting myself. So, I think that it is extremely important to know when to let go of people.
However, this doesn’t mean go and cut out everyone from your life. Self-development and healing shouldn’t be an excuse to be selfish, it should be a kind reminder to yourself and those who have hurt you that you deserve better.
2. You do not (EVER) need to prove your self-worth
When I was younger, around the age of 16, I would constantly try and do things that would prove my worth to other people. It was as though I was proving to them that I was worthy of their friendship. I would give people gifts hoping that they would like me. I would try to alter myself in order to fit into other peoples perceptions and needs. I’d find myself doing things I didn’t want to do for the sake of seeming cooler. But, in reality I was just embarrassing myself.
The biggest advice I can give to anyone when it comes to relationships is to never succumb to the feeling and pressure of proving your self worth. It is a lonely and self-deprecating journey. In fact, no healthy relationship would ever make you feel as though you need to prove you worth. People who love the real and authentic you will never make you feel unworthy of their time or attention. There should be no insecurities within the relationship.
Good friendships are those that make you feel comfortable, safe and seen. People always treat friendships and romantic relationships as two different things. But I think they are essentially the same, they just have different levels of intimacy.
3. Be patient, the right people will come at the right time.
When I was younger the word patience wasnt even in my vocabulary, I was so impatient. I tried rushing through life, trying to form deep connections with people who I had nothing in common with just so I could have friends. I was so afraid to be seen alone.
I’ve come to realise that the right people will come to you at the right time. Sometimes we go through hardships because there is something in our lives that we need to work on and the only way to gain the knowledge of how to overcome these things is to learn from the hardships presented to us. For me personally, I had to work on being more independent and comfortable with being alone. I’ve always been quite scared of doing things by myself and whilst that fear is still prevalent in my life, its hold on my life has loosened. Having little friends allowed me to work on these areas of my life. If nobody was free to go out with me, instead of not going (like I used to) I would just go by myself. Even though it scared me, I never once regretted it.
The lessons I learnt from this really helped me when I went to University. Even though I have a great group of friends at Uni, it is unfair to expect them to go out with me all the time. So when they’re not free, I’ll go to places by myself. If I had never experienced the failed friendships in the past I never would have been able to get to my current level of independence.
So be patient, the right people will come to you at the right time. In the mean time focus on yourself.
4.Put yourself out there
As someone who was really shy growing up (I still am), this was the one lesson that I struggled to come to terms with. Putting myself out there was extremely scary; it forced me out of my comfort zone. The truth is that when you are trapped in your comfort zone you are exposed to the same people over and over again. And that can be a beautiful thing, however you are also limiting yourself to the amount of people you are meeting. If your at school or University I’d recommend attending clubs and societies. They’re a great way to meet new people!
The one thing I would love in a friendship is the ability and freedom to connect so deeply. I love thinking about the big questions in life and I understand that there are people who don’t. This being said I’m still really eager to meet new people and hopefully find people who are on a similar wavelength to me. Even though I am still on my journey of finding these people, I am still constantly putting myself out there in the hopes of finding them.
Putting yourself out there is daunting. But I guarantee you that the more you do it the easier it gets.
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed this weeks blog post! I just want to conclude this post by reminding you to be kind to yourself. Having little to no friends can feel extremely lonely and underwhelming. It is extremely easy to be hard on yourself when friendships don’t work out and often times it is easy to blame yourself. As long as we are constantly learning from our life experiences, we shouldn’t beat ourselves up over the past.
With all of this being said I would love to hear any of your ideas or any of the lessons that you may have learnt regarding this topic. Feel free to comment them down below.
Thank you for reading!
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