Looking back on my life, the importance of my relationships with women is clear. I’m the eldest of three sisters; even though my younger sisters love to bully me for being cringe and a millennial — somehow, despite the fact that I was born in 2005 — they are my best friends, and I laugh the most when I’m with them. I’ve always been extremely close with my mom; I know I can come to her with anything and not only will she meet me with unwavering support, but she’ll also know exactly how to help. The first friends I made were the twin girls I met in preschool, and they’ve been by my side for my entire life. All of my friends through elementary school, middle school, and into high school were all girls, and we grew into women together.
You can say, then, that I’ve always been a “girl’s girl.” I’m grateful that I was raised with so many women around me who served as my role models, confidants, shoulders to cry on, and companions in my best memories. Their admirable ability to be those things for me taught me how to become them for others.
I knew graduating from high school would be the beginning of a new chapter of my life, but I wasn’t quite sure what changes it would bring. I used to say I “didn’t need” any more friends. I saw no reason to expand on the cast of characters in my life. I was content with my family and a small group of girlfriends I had collected over the course of my adolescence. I used to joke with my high school friends that, when I went to college, I would have to find their doppelgängers to make my friends. The underlying meaning of that joke, which I didn’t understand at the time, was that I didn’t know what friendship was without them.
After a summer filled with teary last hang-outs and goodbyes, I left California to go out of state for college in Colorado. I knew that ‘new chapter’ had started, but I didn’t know truly how much I would have to adapt to endure the challenges it brought about.
I remember everything about the day my parents left: the dense feeling of dread that sat in my chest the whole day, the number of pictures I took with them to prolong the inevitable, and the sight of the door closing behind them as they left me in my dorm. I moved in on an early day of welcome week, with hopes of making sure I had time to meet new people and rejoice in my freedom before classes started, and it ended up being the worst week of my life.
I cried nonstop — my roommate and her mom took me out to lunch the day after my parents left, and I got up from the table every five minutes to cry in the bathroom. I had never felt so suffocatingly alone before. I was used to seeing my girlfriends every day at school, and now, walking through campus, there wasn’t a single soul I recognized. Even when we didn’t have school, those friends were just a quick text and a five-minute drive away, and now they were scattered across the country. And when my friends weren’t around, I could always barge into my sisters’ rooms and bother them until they hung out with me, and now I was thousands of miles away from them, too.
I was paralyzed with terror. I had never experienced not having a loved one immediately nearby. I didn’t know what else to do besides sit in my room and cry or walk aimlessly alone around campus while holding back tears.
Back when I joked with my high school girlfriends about needing to find their doppelgängers to befriend, I had toyed with the idea of joining a sorority. I was never opposed to it, but I treated the choice with a level of seriousness one would give to deciding what pair of socks to wear. It circled back to the fact that I couldn’t imagine having friendships that weren’t with my current friends at the time. I also didn’t feel a need to find a ‘sisterhood,’ because I already had my actual sisters.
Then college came around, and suddenly, my only friendships weren’t with me, and I longed for the comfort of having a sister by my side. The shock and debilitating loneliness of my first days of college showed me that having those relationships with women around me was essential to how I lived my life; I suddenly understood the appeal of joining a sorority. I finished my half-completed application and got ready by picking out my outfits and learning everything I could about sorority recruitment.
I knew practically nothing about sorority life — I accidentally called the Greek letters Roman numerals at one point. The only exposure to sorority life I had was my older cousins’ experiences from years ago and TikToks about “Bama Rush.”
I went into recruitment extremely nervous, but I was immediately comforted by the sisterly relationships I saw because they felt like home. Current members gushed about their best friends that they met through their chapter, telling the story of how they met and the hundreds of memories they had made together since. We talked about the women in our lives who uplift us, and we bonded over our shared closeness with our own moms and sisters. It was refreshing to see so many tightly-knit women all together. It was a breath of fresh air that I needed after being away from the women in my life.
The best immediate effect of the recruitment process was meeting others who were in the same place as me. I talked to so many freshmen girls who were also feeling homesick, looking for friendships with other women while missing people from home. I’d meet someone new during a day of recruitment, and then the next day I’d walk through campus and have a face that I recognized and could wave hello to. It seems minuscule, but that small comfort would put a smile on my face all day, which meant a lot when a single lonely day felt like it stretched on for decades.
During one day of recruitment, when I was at the house I ended up joining, I talked to a senior member who had just given a speech about one of her best friends in the chapter. She was crying after talking about how much she loved and was grateful for her friend, and I was crying because the feelings she expressed were exactly what I missed being away from my girlfriends. We were supposed to be doing a tour of the house, but instead we both walked around crying as I confessed my horrible homesickness to her in unabashed detail. She made me feel safe and seen—enough to confide in her about the most challenging time of my life, even though I had known her for less than two minutes. She told me that she was in the same place during her freshman year, and promised me that, no matter how awful it seemed now, it would get better. It was a glimmer of hope that I desperately needed: to see someone who had survived what I was experiencing and now, in her senior year, feel at home in her college town and among girlfriends she cherished.
It sounds totally cheesy and cliché — I definitely thought so before experiencing it — but running home on Bid Day filled me with so much happiness and overwhelming comfort. I ran to a home full of women who smiled at me, gave me welcoming hugs despite having never met me before, and encouraged me to join in on the celebration. I hadn’t felt like I belonged anywhere in college before this moment. Before, I was an alien outsider, walking among the natives of this strange place where they spoke a language I didn’t understand and knew their way around while I stumbled behind. It was my first step to calling college home, and the daunting task of adjusting to college life suddenly felt more manageable because of the inspiring and uplifting women supporting me now.
Up until then, I was stuck looking back on the past — ruminating on the times spent with my mom, sisters, and girlfriends that I felt like I would never get back. For the first time in my college experience, I looked towards the future, wondering who I stood beside in the new member group picture would become my lifelong friends and what wonderful memories we would make together.
I’m happy to report that now — as the senior promised me — college has gotten better. In fact, I’ve had the best experiences of my life in college, and I’m horrifically dreading the day it ends. I laugh at how earnestly I used to swear that I didn’t need more friends. I can’t imagine my life now without all the amazing women that college brought to me and that I’m proud to call my friends. I’m still extremely close with my mom, sisters, and girlfriends from before college, and I’m really thankful that the distance hasn’t dulled those relationships. I’m even more thankful that they’ve been in my life now, because I can apply their examples of sisterhood and friendship they’ve given me to my new relationships.
I lived in my sorority house last year and, even though it’s been less than a year since I moved out, I have so much nostalgia for it. It was the closest college has ever gotten to feeling like home because I lived among so many women at once. I made many new friends who were my neighbors or lived across the hall or down the stairs from me. I was randomly assigned to my roommate, and she’s now my closest friend; I’ve had my deepest and most soul-bearing conversations with her, spent countless hours talking and laughing over everything and nothing, and our memories will be what I reminisce about fifty years from now, thinking about my college experience.
My favorite part about becoming an upperclassman has been meeting all the new members who join. I’ve loved becoming a big sister to my two littles because it allows me to stretch my big sister muscles. It’s comforting to be able to embody that piece of my identity in college. After Bid Day every year, I try to introduce myself and get to know as many new members as I can. I want to be a familiar face that they can wave hello to on campus or unhesitatingly approach if they’re alone. I know how life-changing it can be to have someone like that. This fall, I’ll be a senior, and it will be my last year recruiting for the chapter. I hope that I can be like the senior who helped me more than she could have ever imagined for someone else going through what I did.
I wish I could go back in time and tell my younger self in her early, lonesome, most depressing days of freshman year that it really does get better. I would tell her that I would relive the pain one hundred times if it meant I would get to where I am now. She would be shocked and skeptical, but I think it would make her hopeful. I thought my life ended with college, leaving all the women I had ever known — my entire world — behind. Little did I know that the changes of that ‘new chapter’ meant enriching my life with so many ambitious, heartfelt, strong, and deeply kind women.