A Blessing in Disguise

Right now, I have lots of valuable relationships in my life. My relationship with my friends, my family, my boyfriend. Obviously they are all very important to me. But there's one relationship of mine that carries into all of those other relationships, and nearly every aspect of my life. Which is my relationship with my mental health.

This is a relationship that's always been rocky. Always plenty of ups and downs.

For most of my life, I think it was just a (cliché) little voice in the back of my head. A whisper.

Then, the hormones hit! In the 7th grade, to be precise. Around the time I got my first period, life started changing. A big factor of these changes was that I had transferred to a new school after going to the same school for eight years.

I had all of the stereotypical teenage angst-esque thoughts. The desperate loneliness, the fear of my future, the constant worry. These thoughts clouded the majority of my daily life, and I had no idea how to deal with them.

For the next while, I basically just tried to repress the things I was thinking. I didn't want to deal with them, so I ignored them for the next couple of years.

Until grade nine.

I was at a new school again (duh, kind of had to go to high school!). I started the year with friends who definitely weren't very good for me. Just not my cup of tea, really. Extremely gossipy and rude to other people. They would even say nasty things about each other quite often, and frame it as a 'joke'. Though, I didn't find their 'jokes' to be too funny.

I kind of remember knowing something was off. Sometimes, I'd want to stand up to them, but I told myself it was better to be friends with mean people than to not have any friends at all. The last thing I wanted was to get on their bad side, because then I would end up being just another oblivious victim of their pointless gossip.

The universe sort of helped me out in a way. Made the decision for me. Second semester had just started, and things felt much worse than before. Conversations where I was constantly ignored or interrupted. It 'slipping their minds' to tell me where we were going for lunch. It seemed as though they had begun a gradual process of them trying to forget about me.

So I figured, why bother fighting it? I stopped chasing after them and keeping them in my life.

For the next couple months, I didn't have many friends. Of course, I'd speak to classmates, but I didn't really have a primary group of friends who I'd hang out with. And, boy, was it ever a change!

It felt like a negative change at first. The thoughts came back. The little voice in my head became louder more often, telling me that it was my fault and that I no longer had these people in my life because of my personality. Too annoying, too obnoxious, too 'cringey'. What else could it be? I had convinced myself that it was purely my fault, and that there was absolutely no other possible explanation as to why they had cut me out.

I now know that I was wrong. That we just didn't mix well as people, and it wasn't as seemingly clearly black and white as I'd thought it was. No one was right or wrong, we were just different people with different values and beliefs.

See, that period of my life made me realize a lot about myself. Such as how emotionally and mentally dependent I was on other people. And how I didn't actually really like myself very much, so I distracted myself from feeling sad by being around other people as often as I could be. Thus, began my process of healing.

I think this time in my life was definitely one of the most important stages of my cognitive and emotional development. Having no friends almost forces you into becoming friends with yourself. And a 'friendship' with yourself is just like any other platonic relationship. It requires time and effort.

Now, alone time is very important to me. Going on walks by myself, going to the movies by myself, even going to places like Toronto by myself. I look forward to doing these things, instead of dreading it like I used to. The nagging voice in my head has faded for the most part. It's sort of more like a peaceful elevator music at all times.

My learning during this time also proved to be super beneficial in the future, when I was making friends once again. Instead of basically just befriending anyone willing to talk to me, I established more meaningful connections with people. This is because I sort of thought to myself that, well, if spending time with this person makes me feel worse than I did when I had no friends, then why was I hanging out with them? I started deliberately hanging out with people who encouraged me to do better; to be kinder than I was, to be more open than I was, and to be more mindful than I was.

If I'm being honest, I think I like being alone too much now. Sometimes I'm a bit tempted to just move to a place like Sweden and become a hermit in the mountains. But I know I'd just go crazy and start talking to myself a couple days in.

So, here's my advice: spend a little bit of your life with no friends. I'm not saying to stop talking to everyone you know tomorrow. I just mean that if you ever get the opportunity to do it (e.g. within the first little while of post-secondary when you don't really know anyone), don't be afraid to take it. Especially if you're anything like I was within the first 14 years of my life and you find it pretty challenging to do a lot of things on your own.

I can honestly say that having no friends is one of the best things that's ever happened to me.