How to make a ‘new’ friend?

 

Hey I’m back, currently one “healthy cookie” down in my PG, using a bedsheet as a blanket and thinking and pondering about life.

I met my childhood friends for my birthday. People I’ve known since I was five. People who have seen me through so many different stages of life, and who I’ve seen grow through theirs. But when we met this time, it genuinely felt like we are all living such different trajectories that maybe there aren’t as many things we can deeply relate to anymore.

One friend is super settled in her career and is in the biodata phase. One friend just graduated with her master’s, has started her career and is in her post-breakup exploratory phase. And I am simply in my still-figuring-things-out-and-navigating-long-distance phase.

So it got me thinking…

What is it that truly bridges humans to each other?

Why was it so much easier to make friends when we were younger? And why is it that we cling so tightly to the friends we made when we were younger?

Is it because they are a reminder of a time when everything felt a little more planned out? When we knew what was next? When everyone around us was, for the most part, living a life extremely similar to ours?

Or do we just crave the childlike fun and candidness we had before we became so aware of the world, of ourselves, and of how we are perceived by other people?

I’ll be honest. One of the hardest things for me is making friends.

Not acquaintances. Not people you make small talk with at work. Not people you make friends with just because you happen to be in the same place for a period of time.

Actual friends.

I don’t understand small talk. I don’t really understand how to not be unfiltered. And maybe that’s because one of the many privileges I’ve had is meeting people who have always been authentic with me, and who have given me the space to be authentic too.

So how does one start again?

How do you be yourself when you’re not entirely sure what that even means anymore?

How do you, despite genuinely liking being alone, admit that you still want someone to randomly go to the movies with without the whole process of making a friend feeling so incredibly draining?

I think that’s what I realized today.

I missed my friends.

But I also realized that I’m probably not the kind of person who can make short-term friendships very easily.

People are fascinating. I love hearing people’s stories, understanding why they are the way they are, and discovering the little things that make someone who they are. But we also live in a world where it is increasingly difficult to open up. To make space for someone new. To share the things you’ve spent years shoving under a rug.

To go through that whole process again, the overthinking, the wondering if they like you, the fear of being judged, the craving for acceptance, the wondering whether you are being too much or not enough.

Maybe that is why making friends as an adult feels so much harder.

So yeah, I’ve been thinking about how strange it is that the people who have known us the longest can sometimes feel the most familiar, even when our lives no longer look anything alike.

And about how maybe growing up means accepting that you won’t always have the same things in common with the people you grew up with.

Maybe the point isn’t to find people who are living the exact same life as you.

Maybe it’s just to find people who make you feel like you can be a little more yourself while you’re figuring out what that life is supposed to look like.

So, how does one make lasting friendships when they’re 25 and above?

Genuinely asking.