I didn't want to be alone.
When I was a kid I didn't hold a lot of self worth or confidence. I was insecure and thought that if I was friends with the popular girl in 1st grade, I'd have it made. I'd be set.
Yes, this started young for me.
I had thought that by searching and selecting certain individuals was how not to be alone and would give me that self worth or confidence. Here is what actually happened (not verbatim) :
"Hey can I hang out with you at recess?" I asked
"Uh...I guess so," Popular girl answered, and I was stoked! Finally I wouldn't be alone talking to the sun or sitting at the swings by myself. Popular girl, her friends and I walked out to recess together and just stood around on the slab of cement looking super cool, of course. It was winter so I had dressed in a under-tank and a long sleeve shirt, but standing in that sun was making me hot. I told all the new friends that I had made that I was feeling warm. I mentioned that I did have an undershirt (noting that they were wearing tank tops) and that I was really getting hot.
"Take off your shirt then!" Popular girl had said a bit impatiently.
So I did. I felt better until a teacher came up to me and asked me to put my shirt back on.
My new friends curled into themselves and laughed... at me.
At this time I did only what I could think of as a first grader, at that time, which was to put my shirt back on and run away with their laughter still echoing in my head. I spent the rest of my recess's wishing I had an imaginary friend but I couldn't conjure up one so I talked to whatever I could, tried to join "clubs", tried to make up my own "club", told everyone at recess that I thought was "cool" but none of it worked.
Then I met Tylene. She was someone I wasn't randomly picking but someone who came. Since I didn't understand how friendship really worked at the time it wasn't what I was looking for, but you know what she did? She stuck around. We would have play dates that I wouldn't admit I actually enjoyed and looked forward too and at times I'd try and push her away and be mean. It's not something I care to share because I feel horrible about how I treated her and I know that no matter how many times I apologize and try to make up for it, it was still our past. She still stuck around. We have been friends for 20 years and I'm still amazed that she is my best friend. She taught me that true self worth is being okay being you and that friendship isn't just something that snaps into place all of a sudden and you're never going to be alone ever again but that you have to work at it, even if it gets uncomfortable and the other (me) was a jerk.
As I grew older I still didn't have an understanding of good and healthy relationships. I thought I needed to have a boyfriend and I still pursued friends that I clicked really well with off of the bat. In middle school I had a friend that was quiet and shy but when I met someone I clicked with and things were going good for me, I told her we couldn't be friends anymore that she wasn't "cool" enough. This crushed her and she left. She is still someone I need to apologize too, because that was an awful thing to do and it makes me sick that I was that way. Wouldn't you know, my friendship with the girl I clicked with right away blew up in a big way. I was upset that these girls were "making fun of me" (I put that in quotes because looking back I don't think that they were) so I switched schools, then my friend started hanging out with those girls, I didn't like it, then gave my friend opportunities to choose me over them, she chose them (or forgot was more likely), and so I told her I didn't want to be friends anymore. A few years later we reconciled but never became friends again.
At this point you might be thinking "why would anyone want to be your friend you jerk" and you wouldn't be wrong. I thought the same thing for a long good while. Tylene was still my friend (amazingly enough) but had moved to a different town. Luckily we still talked a lot and when we did visit each other we tried to make the most out of our time with our shenanigans. (There may or may not be a Megan and Tylene Show somewhere on tape that we wanted to put on YouTube but never did.) I think this was the time when I really began to evaluate myself and what my addition was to relationships. My relationships so far weren't working as I expected and instead of the self worth and confidence that I was looking for from other people, I got LESS self worth and LESS confidence.
I began to work on myself.
Only a few years of working on my own thoughts and actions I met my friend Patrica. We were in a institute class together and got along pretty well. We were classroom buddies but didn't see much of each other outside of our class, our class ended, and then I got married to my husband. Later we began to really bond but just before that I met my friend Katherine.
Katherine and her husband were visiting from where they had met at college because they were planning to move to where my hubby and I currently were living. When we had met I found out that her husband had known mine since the pre-teen era of their childhoods. At this time I was starting to grow some confidence and self worth because I had met and married my husband, we were setting goals for ourselves, we had already jumped through some hurdles and he was my best friend. However, I also found myself not even trying to make friends with any females. I had my husband and that was good enough more me... or at least that's what I tried to tell myself. Katherine and her husband had invited us to do family home evening with them one Monday evening. I had recently found out I was pregnant with my first, which threw in a whole new slur of emotions but the strongest of them that I was feeling as we drove to their apartment was nerves. Even after a great conversation I still doubted everything I said, but we kept getting together. Katherine had taught me that friendships are more than just first impressions and isn't one way. The more I got to know her and observe her other friendships the more I learned that relationships are not just one at at time but a unity and love for everyone.
Some of her other relationships just happened to be with my friend Tylene who had moved near by and my friend Patrica who also lived close. We began to weave our friendships together into this group of women that I am insanely grateful for. We were all married and all soon very pregnant and about to have a first born's close together. Even though I was now making friends I STILL didn't understand how it all worked. I got jealous and over protective of the relationships I deemed stronger than the others. It was very competitive for me and internally I struggled to do the right thing and was afraid I was going to end up friendless again and again forever.
As we were compelled to move to another city away from this group of Gals that had grown together through babies and now second pregnancies it was brought to my husband and my attention from Patrica's husband that we seemed to favor certain couples over others. This stung because it was true, but because of the time and tentative care from these three women I learned just what it means to be a friend. Patrica taught me that friends are everywhere if you're just willing to look. So I evaluated my life, studied my friendships, and took the church efforts of Visiting Teaching (now ministering, you can read my intake of that if you click here) and made a huge leap in the friendship department by working on how to be a true friend to everyone I meet.
I still don't know everything there is to know about friends (I've even looked up the many blog posts there are out there about how to make friends, there's some good information if you're curious), but from what I've learned from my group of Gal's and other budding relationships is that friends are literally everywhere you just have to be keen on looking for things you have in common verses what makes you different which can be hard sometimes; it's okay to have more than one REALLY GOOD friend at a time; and to give budding friendships (including those you've only met once) lot's of time to grow. Everyone was just one person before they made a friend. I would advise to do as my friends have done for me and as I'm trying to do from their examples to not rely on first impressions. You only get a sliver of their life up until they met you and there is SO much more to love about them that you'd never have known if you just give up. Along with all that, is to forgive and try to see things from where they are coming from by asking questions. Lastly, work on you. Not in the defensive "take me or leave me" sense but on the idea of curiosity, patience and acceptance of all that you are apart of whether that be the good or bad, and apologize when you realize it's the bad.
I'll be writing about apologies next: "are they really for those you apologize to or for yourself?"
Happy Valentines Day!
Now, go make a new friend! ;)
XOXO
-Megan
