Growing up, I was never really good at keeping friends. I never valued them, choosing to run away the moment I sensed that things weren’t going the way I wanted them to. Until the 7th grade, I could effectively say I had no real friends in life. Everything changed when I moved schools. I won’t say it was a good change because it definitely had its downs. 7th grade was hell. It was so bad, in fact, that I literally had to consciously block the memories of that time period out of my brain. I dissociated for almost that entire year, and now can only remember the smallest tidbits of information. In fact, sitting here and writing this right now, I’m trying to remember things, and it’s like trying to find something that was never really in the box you thought you kept it in.
The rest of my life began in the 9th grade. I found some of my closest friends, including my best friend. I started seeing my friends as real people, individuals worth treasuring and valuing. I will always be forever grateful to these people for making the beginning of high school not as bad as I had imagined. My life came to a halt again at the end of the 10th grade. When COVID started, I never got to actually finish the school year that I still consider the best of my life. I was moving schools, and to me, it wasn’t just moving schools; it felt like I was moving planets away from the people I was used to. This was a whole new set of people, so different from the people I had interacted with my whole life, and a whole new set of relationships to get used to.
When college began, I think I got a bit too comfortable. I pretty much lost my first friend group 2 months in. Sometimes I do regret running away instead of facing the problem head-on, but without those choices, I would never have met the people I’m friends with today. I always thought I was never the problem. That it was the people around me. But growing up, I think I was the problem. I couldn’t keep a single group of friends, and even if I felt left out or excluded, my answer was always to run away. I’ve now been friends with the same people since around the middle of my first year. They’re great, they really are. Even if I have problems and just want to scream or cry, or if I feel excluded or like they don’t like me, they really do make me feel so happy to just be myself around them. Between my insecurities in my friendships and myself, I ended up putting myself out there a LOT, and suddenly found myself surrounded by so many amazing people, each and every one of them too good to be true.
And this entire backstory? Well, it leads me to today. The 2nd of January 2026, 1:04 AM. I just finished watching the very last episode of Stranger Things, and even if it felt more like a nostalgic, coming-of-age film than a supernatural, fast-paced thriller, it definitely struck a chord. I found myself crying through the entire thing, and if you haven’t seen it yet, you might want to look away now, because when Dustin started talking about his friends and how they shaped him into the person he is today, I really, really lost my shit. I am who I am today because of the amazing people I have surrounded myself with. Screw everyone and everything that tries to keep us apart, including graduation, cause when the older kids started talking about how they really did miss each other and how they would meet every single month? It got me thinking. Was this going to be my friends and me a few years from now? Barely meeting, somewhat losing touch, but still doing our hardest to not lose the parts of each other we had slowly incorporated into our personalities for the 4 years we spent together?
Somewhere between Dustin’s monologue and the last DnD game, I stopped scrutinising my friendships and started really seeing them and appreciating them. Growing up, I never really thought I could find happiness in my friendships. But watching it made me realise that happiness can really be found in many places, and I found my happiness today in a place the younger me never could. So, even if the Stranger Things finale wasn’t everything you expected or wanted it to be, for me, it hit all the right places. Here’s to 2026 being our year, and to the beginning of the rest of our lives :)