Let's be honest here I’m not a girl who has a lot of friends. My best friend is my dog, my second best friend is my cat and next on the list is Meg Ryan. The friends I do have I love, a lot. But in truth most of my teenage years seemed to revolve more around watching the TV show Friends than hanging out with some of my own. So when I made the rather insane decision to move to New York for university this September the issue of making friends wasn’t really in the forefront of my mind.
I imagined coming here and studying, exploring the city, missing my parents, pretending I was in Gossip Girl, but I didn’t really see myself making that many friends. I generally like being on my own more than I like being with people, unless these people are pets, and so I’d assumed this trend would continue into my higher education.
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What I hadn’t quite considered was just how lonely being in a new city can be. The difference between being on my own, in my home surrounded by my family and slightly odd friends of my brothers and being on my own in a city I didn’t know with absolutely no one to come barging into my bedroom demanding I come down for dinner was extreme. And after just one week of going to the cinema on my own one too many times I decided it might be time to try and make some friends. Which, it turns out, is easier said than done.
Making friends in a new city is a strange experience. The university organised a lot of welcoming activities which generally consisted of awkward bonding games, name tags with gender neutral pronouns and free food. It all felt a bit like the beginning of Lost. We all knew that we were here, stuck on this island, and would eventually have to bond but we are all also slightly apprehensive about possibly making friends with the serial killer on the plane.
One thing I find really hard about making new friends is that it makes you question yourself. I have a tendency to be cripplingly insecure and as soon as one of my jokes about how disgusting American tea is fell flat I found myself hurrying off into a corner wondering what on earth I was doing here. And as more and more attempts to bond failed I began to question everything.
With no old friends around to tell me I looked fabulous in my new dress I felt like the ugliest person at every social gathering, my stories were boring, my accent was annoying and the only thing I seemed to be able to formulate an opinion on was* Greys Anatomy*. I felt different from everyone. Things I’d assumed everyone cared about like Kate Middleton’s hair and stand up comedy seemed pointless and things that I thought no one except super clever (boring) adults cared about were all anyone seemed to talk about. One evening, sat alone in my bedroom suspecting everyone else was off at some super cool college party, I broke down and called my mum crying. 'No one likes me!' I sobbed. 'Everyone’s too cool or too American or too clever. Also New York has loads of rats. What if the rats are my only friends?!'
But things weren't awful forever. In fact 24 hours and two pep talks later I was having dinner with an awesome girl I’d met through my college program and feeling like I was probably actually maybe the coolest person in New York City.
Since then it’s been pretty up and down. I have days where I feel incredibly lonely, miss my pets and wish I was back in a country where everyone spelt ‘colour’ the right way. But then I also have days where I stay up till 2am talking about feminism and When Harry Met Sally and homework with amazing people and suddenly everything feels like it might actually be okay.
I’ve made most of my friends through my classes, and you learn to look out for tell tail signs of someone who might be one of your kind. I drop specific interests into conversations in the hope that a potential friend might pick them up but no longer feel embarrassed or isolated if they don’t. The biggest thing has been accepting that it’s not all going to happen straight away, I don’t have to impress everyone, or panic when they don’t like me. But I also don’t have to be that girl who doesn’t have a lot of friends anymore.
I can still be independent, but I don’t have to be alone. And most importantly I don’t have to change, because one day, someone will want to talk about the feminist undertones in* The Gilmore Girls*. And that will be a very good day.
Picture: Eugenia Loli
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.