the most social person in any setting. Never had a large group of friends or attended copious social events. But she did have a few close friends up her sleeve to keep her afloat.
Lately though, at the ripe age of twenty, she felt like she barely even had that.
Not quite sure where she went wrong – though more than happy to blame herself – once again a friendship she valued so highly and had poured so much love into disintegrated. Certainly not the first time, but a lost love always comes as a shock.
It’s easier to overlook the state of friendships when your focus is on a significant other. There’s always, without fail, someone there. When that relationship ends however, and what you really need most is a friend – that’s when it becomes clear again, that someone is never enough.
She was aware that she was always quite hard on herself and tended to see her situations in a more negative light than how they truly were. She did have friends, she knew this. But close friends? That she saw often? Not anymore, and that was true.
She certainly didn’t have any lifelong friends, and felt there was something wrong with that. Everybody she knew seemed to have at least one friend that they’d kept around their whole life, except her. She’d cut ties with almost everyone from her past, and for what reasons? Things that seemed utterly irrelevant now in her time of loneliness.
She wasn’t having a bad time though. She kept busy with work, in her downtime she’d read, watch Netflix, shop online. All of which she enjoyed. But she knew deep down that there was something missing from this life. She’d created the illusion of satisfaction, but there was a glitch in the picture.
Now, in this place where it was just her and work, she looked for fulfilment in money. It seemed her income had become her only friend. It was her someone.
Her ambitions were no longer about happiness and adventures with friends, she was no longer able to conceptualise those things. She’d begun to believe that money and thus material things would be able to provide her with adequate happiness and fulfilment. Working for money had become all she knew.
She had been craving close friendships, but she could feel herself evolving beyond that. Like staying up so late that eventually tiredness passes and being wide awake comes right back around. She’d almost passed that longing loneliness and now she was falling into a state of contempt.
Eventually a sense of comfort comes with feeling low. It becomes easier to stay there, to completely lose sight of just how important happiness is.
The thing was, she did know how good friends were. She knew that she still wanted them and needed them, but she was comfortable in her loneliness and it was holding her back from trying.
When someone asked her to hang out she said she’d let them know. She was in a hole and didn’t have the strength to pull herself out.
Again, someone else asked her to hang out. They saw her in that hole and they reached their hand down and offered to help pull her out, and she remembered something.
She remembered that even though the only someone that she could truly rely on was herself, it was okay to need someone else. Because they might need her too.
