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Since becoming an adult (though I am loath to admit that it ever happened) and moving away from my comfort zone of college friends, I've found that we're all a little embarrassed to admit a certain fact. More and more often, I was hearing from my friends who lived very far away from me, "I don't have any friends and I don't know how to make any."
It's an embarrassing thing to admit, really, because Making Friends 101 was a 15 minute course in the first week of kindergarten. We should have all taken better notes. But making friends in school is easy because you're forced into it. You walk into your classroom and think to yourself, I'm going to spend the next eleven years with these people so we might as well make the best of it right off the bat. "Would anyone care to trade a Hostess cupcake?!" You probably didn't think about that but in reality, it's what happened. Well… its what happened if you went to a tiny school like I did. My graduating class had only a few kids difference between who was in cap and gown and who was present at Kindergarten round-up.
But if you grow up and move away from your most comfortable place (or if your comfortable place changes and morphs away from you)--you can find yourself lonely and in desperate need for friends. Walking out of your house can, sometimes, feel like looking for a place to sit in the lunch room. Not because we're so scared to be alone. I love to be alone. I'm an introvert by nature. But there's a difference between being an introvert and denying much human connection. We need to connect with other people. We have to feel hands on our backs and we need to hear words whispered in our ears. We need to share ourselves and we need to receive others. It's what makes a human into a person.
For my first year and a half in McPherson, I found myself constantly feeling like I didn't have any friends. There were people that I got along with at work or friends of my family members that I got along with and we'd sometimes hang out but I never really felt like we had the friendships that I was used to. Little did I know that I was lucky to have a substantial starting off point.
On Friday, I'll come back with Part 2 including stories and tips for making friends and, in general, blooming where you're planted.
Libby Parker is using her English degree in the only way she knows how. With an undeniable appreciation for the human condition, she was born with a storyteller's perspective. Itching to take the idea of a small town, Midwestern girl from kitschy and cliche to something universal and relatable, she tells stories. She's a regular person living in a familiar town embarking on the same, ordinary events as everyone else. She's inviting you to talk with her about how we're all unique and individual but we're all, comfortingly, very much the same.
