I Did A Thing is our weekly advice column where the Her Campus editorial team helps you out when you ruin your own life (hey, we’ve been there). Email advice@hercampus.com for any and everything you need help with. We’ll answer you (anonymously!) on hercampus.com so we can all learn, together. We’ve got your back.
@awkwardandshy: I’ve been feeling really unsure of myself lately. I just feel weird and awkward and just straight up alone, like I don’t have any of the real friends I should have at this point in college and like I haven’t done the things I should have done at this point in my life. How do I stop feeling so shitty? I feel like I used to be confident, but lately I just don’t feel like it at all.
@LaneMoore: Hey dude! First of all I am literally you. I have no idea what your backstory is, or what your childhood was like, but from this question alone, I am so you and I would hug you if I could. I feel like a giant pile of weirdness all the time, and wonder if I have friends the way other people have friends, and the main thing I hear in your question is that you’re in a nightmare cycle of comparison. I just spent the last few years writing a book about loneliness and having “the right” everything and how shitty that feels, and if you think I wrote it because I’m healed and I’ve solved it, LOL, no.
What I can tell you is: please stop comparing yourself, which I know is hard as hell because I still do it all the time. If you can, accept that right now you’re sure of nothing and you don’t have what you’re “supposed” to have. OK. So that’s how things are. What good can be found in your life anyway? What joys can you still find within that? Plus, you truly never know if other people are better off. The people you’re comparing yourself to might be miserable, or had privileges you don’t have, or know things you don’t know.
It’s a process, it’s not easy, but right now, you’re still good enough, even in this pain.