Columns, Opinion

OOMMEN: On friendship

I spent the last dozen years of my life in the same cliquish K–12 school before Boston University came along with opportunities that I hoped would put the “fresh” in freshman.

For the majority of those years, I had a close group of friends. Unfortunately, years passed, and some of my friends changed schools or left the country.

During my junior year, my friends and I grew extremely close, and I knew that it was going to be hard to find friends like them in college.

In high school, they were my security.

It didn’t matter that I didn’t have close friends from elsewhere because only they really knew me. Everyone else I met was just an acquaintance.

And so when college came around — the time to meet new people and make new friends — I knew that I was going to have to approach things a little bit differently.

This was the first time I had to make friends that really mattered.

The last time I had to do that I was in the first grade.

I was a social butterfly, but when I turned 13 I decided who I did and didn’t click with.

Of course I never resisted people, and I was moderately sociable, but fate was just a key factor that played a role in all of my real friendships.

I was never the one to spark anything.

Recently, I’ve begun to question whether I have forgotten how to make true friends.

I’ve hung out with so many people over the past month, but at different times and for different reasons, and they were never consistent.

For example, after I met a few girls for lunch one day, I wondered whether I would see any of them again.

At one point I even thought about the next time I met someone, to ask them upfront if they were going to stick around for the next four years.

Thankfully, I came to my senses before I did that.

I suppose  my problem is that I expect too much from absolute strangers and that I look for friends who are exactly like me.

I want to become someone that everybody likes, but that might require me to change my interests and personality around new people.

If I tried to fit in with everyone, I would miss my old self and hate the things I do because I don’t really mean it.

I guess some things remain unanswered and unfulfilled but honestly, I think I’m going to stop overthinking things and let fate work its stuff again.

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