Guess I'll Go Eat Worms...

I’m facing something of a crisis right now. It’s nothing major, and I’m more bothered by the thought that I should be bothered by it than by the fact itself. But it’s been on my mind and I’m not sure how it’s going to be resolved.

The problem is that I do not have a core group of friends right now. I’ve never been much of a social butterfly anyway, and have never really desired more than a few close friends and few “contextual acquaintances” (the people I talked to in class, the people I sat with at church, the people I talked to in the halls but didn’t spend much time with otherwise). But for the most part I have always had that handful of people I could relate to, talk to, hang out with if I didn’t have anything else to do, and who were just there.

But my core group has sort of been dissolving for awhile now. It happened so gradually that I only just now realized how thorough it has been. Everyone that I can think of has either gotten married (and as much as they like to promise that it won’t, marriage really does change the nature of the friendship) or moved away permanently or gone home for the summer (which is basically permanent because by the time they return I will be gone myself). Everyone. Most of this has happened within the last year, and quite a bit within the last month.

At least in the past when something similar to this has happened I have known a few people just barely outside my core group and have been able to readjust, reform, join a new group that is not quite the same, but enough to get me through the transition period. This time, however, I can’t imagine what I am going to do.

It’s not that I’m friendless. I still feel very fortunate to have the friends that I do, people I know will always be my friends even as distance and circumstance separate us. And the married friends aren’t completely gone from my life—they’re just not present on as regular a basis like they used to be. And I have one roommate who is still around (the other two have now moved out and have not been replaced). She’s not the one I related to best, but we do enjoy each others’ company and I like living with her and talking to her. And there’s always my brother. Somehow I feel like he shouldn’t count because he’s family, but I spend enough time with him that if he wasn’t my brother I would call him a really good friend, so I don’t see why applying the label “brother” should change that.

But those relationships are all too scattered to really form a core group, and I don’t really know where else to go. It’s kind of a strange, unsettling feeling. And the knowledge that I will be gone in just a few months makes me think I don’t have much chance of forming friendships in the meantime—I just don’t have the time and friendships require lots of time to form. Plus there’s the fact that I’m not much of an initiator and tend to just sit around waiting for people to invite me to do things—that’s a strike against me here when I don’t have other friends to push me into social situations.

Part of me is perfectly okay with this because I’ll be busy with my thesis all of spring term, and I’ll have family functions taking up some of my time summer term, and I can fulfill some of my social needs with my roommate and my brother and my best married friend who I still hang out with at least once a week. But part of me realizes that it’s the most relaxed time of the year, and my last bit of relative freedom before I dive into another academic program, and I just really, really want to spend time with people. Substantial time with people. Introvert though I am, I also love being around people, getting to know people (even when it’s a slow process), talking, listening, laughing, doing crazy things (but not too crazy). Last summer was fun—my core group then was a group I hadn’t spent much time with in the past and it was a blast. I love my steady, solid, long-term friends, but there’s something sort of exciting about becoming part of a new group. I think I would kind of like that my last few months here at BYU. But I just don’t know where to look…It’s the kind of thing that can’t be forced, you know?

Every once in awhile I'll start feeling just a little down about this and kind of sigh and the first thing that comes to mind is that little sing-song saying, "Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, guess I'll go eat worms." And it's funny because the thought is so silly that it immediately snaps me out of my mood. Oh that I could laugh at all my problems so easily!