Do I Have Friends?

I'm about to write about something that has followed me through my life. Something that I continue to struggle with daily. I've been wanting to write about it for a while, and each time I think about it, resistance comes up. Going along with the theme of my life right now, I decided to go against that resistance and just go for it.

Friends.

I often ask myself many questions around this topic. What is a friend? Who are my friends? Do I have friends? Am I a good friend?

From a young age, we are basically given friends. The people we go to school with. As we get older, we begin to have more agency over who our friends are. We see them every weekday at school and often see them on the weekends too.

From a young age, though, I always had anxiety about my Saturday nights. Who was I going to see? What was I going to do? Do people want to hang out with me?

I used to and still continue to put so much pressure on myself for Saturday nights. To be doing something fun. To be surrounded by friends.

But why? Ego, maybe. Or ego, probably.

My ego tells me that I need more than what I have so that I feel secure in my sense of self. It tells me that whoever does show up isn't enough. It tricks my mind into thinking that it's not about love. It's about feeling good enough.

I want to get deeper into this question: what is a friend? When we are young, most friends play the same role; fun friends. As we get older and get deeper with ourselves and vulnerable with other people, we start seeing the notion that we have friends for different reasons. Although we have friends for different reasons, we still use this all encompassing word to describe all of them.

It's interesting, though, because we don't refer to the person that we are in a romantic relationship with as our friend and we don't refer to our family as friends, but wouldn't these be our best friends?

So, it goes back to my question. What is a friend? Unfortunately, I don't have an answer for you. As you've probably seen, along with the theme of facing resistance, another theme of my blog posts is that I don't have all the answers. Heck, I don't even have most of the answers.

I'm still trying to figure out this life. Similar to the way that you probably are.

One of the things I am still trying to figure out as you probably see by now is the concept of friends.

I still get anxious on Saturday nights. I still question if I have any friends. I still ponder what a friend is. If I stay home on Saturday and don't have plans, does that mean that I'm not good enough? Does that mean that nobody likes me?

I pushed a lot of people away throughout my life. My high school friends. My college friends. Many of whom I have reconnected with over the last two years, but unfortunately, many of the friendships will still never be the same. I've worked on making new friends, new people to do things with, new people to get vulnerable with.

I've made a lot of friends, I have a lot of friends. I know that objectively. So then why do I constantly question these things and fixate on it?

Well, because my experience throughout my life with friends has not been all sunshine and roses. I used people. I cheated people. I swore at people. I told people to fuck off. I scared people away with my behaviours.

Even though I am not that guy anymore, I still carry around many of the scars that that guy created. While many of the scars have healed, many of the scars are still there.

So, if you think you're the only young adult who deals with friendship problems, you're wrong. You're very wrong because I do too. I often show the amazing parts of my recovery, but there are still many parts that I struggle with.

Life is ups and downs. I hope that by showing you my ups, you can be inspired to chase your own highs. I hope by showing you my downs that you can realize that you are not alone in your own lows.