I was in my room, staring at the lights glowing into the hallway. The orange lamplight from my brother’s room and the blue TV light from my mom’s. Their voices responded one-sidedly to phone conversations. Laying there in the dark, I longed for what they had. Someone I could talk to late into the night. About anything and everything. Someone who I could listen to and would listen to me.

In fifth grade, I realized I didn’t really have any friends.

My best friends that I went to school with got separated from me, two of them in the school’s other building a few blocks away and the other in a different class. We didn’t talk to each other much during that time, and the friends I made in class were just that – class friends.

My mom used to tell me you can’t be everybody’s friend. But I thought she was being cynical. You only have to get to know someone and talk to them often. With that mindset, I went through several friendships involving me texting a person every day, making small talk and hoping we’d become best friends. With the best friends I had, I hid my loneliness of not being able to interact with them openly and kept the appearance of the kind person they thought I was. Then I’d sit in the living room alone at night, feeling alone and miserable.

In my first year of high school, I was toting along yet another friend candidate that I was determined to make the one. The difficulty of relationships was becoming clear to me as awkwardly tried to maintain a social life. As I mentioned in my post ‘The First Reveal’, I did eventually befriend a group of people who embraced my odd sides and became a lot more comfortable with myself throughout the rest of my high school years. I even connected with someone emotionally and found that relationship I had always wanted.

Now that I’m in college, it almost feels like I’m starting all over again. Pursuing friendships to have someone to talk to, to have something to do other than work. The only difference is that it’s like a game where the difficulty level is on high and, unless you’re willing to make a move, you won’t get anywhere. A roommate, a class friend, a person you talk to at your club, and a person you’ve been friends with for years are on all varying levels of intimacy. Having people you talk to because they’re near you all the time, people you share something in common with, and people who actually know you. The amount of accessibility and things you have in common with someone else is only the beginning of the relationship.

My advice this time around is not only to be yourself, but to pursue friendships in earnest and with interest. It won’t always work out and sometimes a relationship you thought you had with someone will drift away, whether the reason is something physical like a change in classes or clubs or something more sudden like you guys no longer talking. Losing relationships are easy, especially when you don’t know each other that well, but keeping good people around is tough work. It’s a process that involves two or more people trying to make a connection. And that process needs all parties to contribute to the effort. There’s nothing better than gaining a long-term friend, until you get to that point, don’t let it get to you when things don’t work out and choose wisely. When it works out, all the effort you put in makes the payoff constant presence, entertainment and support worth it.