Twenty-Two

This is a public confession: I think I peaked in high school.

I wasn't cool, or even especially well-liked. I wasn't a cheerleader and I never had a boyfriend. I didn't go to parties. I'm not the kind of person you think of when you think of when of peaking in high school. Still, I believe it's the truth.

Here's the thing: I was a geek in high school, and I studied way more than necessary, and I overachieved, and I rarely defied my parents, all with this illusory fantastic future in mind. But I also had a group of friends. And we did things together. And we hung out on the weekends. Some of them partook in parent-defying behavior when they weren’t with me; others didn’t. But they were there for me often, and we listened to the same music, and we read the same books—we were a cohesive social group.

It took me awhile to get there. I can remember being younger, thirteen maybe, and being alone, and desperately wanting a certain group of girls to like me, and being confused about why they didn’t. But then I went to a high school with double the enrollment of my middle school, and I located a handful of people that were more like me (my people, if you will), and I forgot about those other girls. This made me look forward to college, when the pool of possible friends would again grow, this time exponentially.

But I never really found my people in college. Yes, I made a few friends, but they didn’t listen to the same music as me, and they didn’t read the same books as me. I was not a part of a cohesive social group—there was never that easy and basic understanding amongst my college friends and I that yes, of course, we would hang out together on the weekends. And I never really got the point where I enjoyed house parties, and bars still make me unreasonably nervous. So a lot of times, I stayed in and watched TV.

And now that I’m a twenty-two-year-old college graduate, I’ve found myself feeling a little like I did in middle school. Why is it that I’m alone most of the time? Where are my people? Why don’t the girls at the cool lunch table like me?!?

But seriously, I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, and I think the problem is that in college I sort of abandoned the structured social events (clubs, sports, etc.) that had, in high school, allowed a person as painfully introverted and socially anxious as me to make friends. Because the friends I did make in college sort of shunned these things and I also willingly shunned them because I wanted to distance myself from the overachieving, trying-too-hard person that I had been.

Maybe I shouldn’t have, though, because there is nothing harder for me than actively seeking out social engagements. The fear of rejection is seriously crippling. I always begin to call someone that I haven’t seen in a while, and then the following occurs to me: Wouldn’t they have called me if they wanted to hang out me? What will we do? Oh god what if they want to go to a bar and I order a drink wrong?! Aren’t they probably already busy with their significant other? Aren’t they probably busy with/tired from their super awesome life/job?

So obviously, it gets pretty complicated, so I put down the phone and watch TV instead. Maybe I should join a book club or something? Or forever cherish the memory of having friends back when I was seventeen.