By O. Deng, TIWP Student

Friendship is one of those things I’ve learned everything about, but also nothing. Maybe it was my struggle to make new friends at a school whose demographic I wasn’t used to. Maybe it was the way I was sheltered from making new friends as a kid, where I saw the same thirty people everyday and met a total of zero new people everyday. I was close with four people, not because we had a genuine connection, but because school and our parents forced our togetherness. However, we grew up with each other and I enjoyed our friendship. Then high school hit. I guess you could say it was evil, taking a girl who didn’t know how to make new friends into a place where relationships were superficial and your friends were friends with people who hated you. Sure, I had people to talk to in my classes, but why did it feel like we were never going to be friends? This was when I learned how tiring it could be to talk to people and make new friends. So I stopped. I didn’t make an effort to initiate conversations anymore. I sat in the corner and watched as people laughed with their friends. They looked so happy. But I was not. So I started again. I made an effort to talk to people. I laughed and smiled and tried to enjoy talking to them. And I did. Really. Sort of. Why is it that you have to make the most effort in order to make friends? Why didn’t friendship come as easily as it did in preschool, where all you had to do was ask in order to collect people and connections? Yes, I do have friends from elementary school. Yes, I am still friends with people I’ve known since first grade, but it’s not the same as it once was. I haven’t seen them in almost a year but we talk on Instagram every day. Still, our conversations are dry and boring, not as lively as they once were. There’s no doubt we have grown apart, despite sending each other reels about your friendship and interdependence on each other. But deep down you know that if you guys were to part ways you wouldn’t care. How could you? Your face didn’t light up with excitement every time they messaged you anymore. In fact, you would leave them on “delivered” for days on end because your friendship with them was more like grading homework than fun.