I've been struggling with making friends at college and I'm really okay with admitting that. It's not a flaw, it's just who I am. I've struggled with my anxiety disorder for as long as I can remember, but I never put a name to it until my junior year of high school. I would dread going to school everyday just because of the sick feeling I would get in my stomach on the way there. Not for any reason, it just came naturally to me and so it's just a piece of who I am and that's fine. It's grown with me and I've learned how to work around it. My anxiety controlled my life for a small period of time (I quit rowing because of it), but I've worked really hard and now I'm starting to get back in control of my life.
Eleanor Roosevelt once said, "Do one thing everyday that scares you." I used to think that she was crazy. If it scares me and I do it everyday then I would just have a miserable life. NO. I was so wrong. For me that one thing everyday is talking to people. I force myself to talk to people or message someone. Of course other things scare me, but right now I need to put myself out there and make some friends. Well that and the only thing I can think of that scares me is spiders and death so I'm obviously not going to deal with those things right now.
My English professor, whom I'm not a big fan of, may have helped me make a friend yesterday. For class we have to write a memoir (maybe I'll share it in October for Breast Cancer Awareness) and we do peer editing. Well yesterday I had to work with a couple of new people, two of them I really just do not mesh with, but the other one may be a new friend because of #AJO. You see, she had had a seizure a few years ago and I was about to ask her if she had epilepsy (anyone with a brain can have a seizure though) when she mentioned #AJO and showed me her wrist where she had written #AJO in purple sharpie. I wanted to hug her. Anyone that knows me knows that I hate hugs, but #AJO warms my heart so much. I told her that I was from Erie and we quickly found out that we had a few mutual friends (Jackie & Joanne). We started DMing on Twitter after class and I had to force myself to type a message to her and just send it - we're all in the same boat here just trying to survive. I was going to ask her to go to ALF with me, but decided to just say I was really happy I got to meet someone else from Erie that I didn't already know.
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| Jackie, Joanne, Me, & Serena at Taylor Swift in Philly |
To wrap this up I'm going to share one more story from this summer. I had had a weird "break up" with a friend (it's fixed now, there was never any bad blood) this past January. When I was reflecting on my life in June I realized that I had done to our mutual friends what I had believed she had done to me - left. I stopped talking to everyone and closed myself away with a couple of friends that I made this year. Well over the summer I decided to text one of those friends and I'm so glad I did. It was actually kind of a relief. I just thought I would share that. Because of my social anxiety I just assume people are done with me even when I'm the one that drops them. It's weird, maybe I'll explain someday.
Do you do anything to step outside of your comfort zone? How do you deal with anxiety?
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