In grade 12, I lost all my best friends at once.
Throughout my life, my friends have always been my family. I have a very small genetic family who I’m not very close to to begin with. Because of this, my parents have always taught me to choose my friends wisely and treat them like family. My dad’s best friends are my aunt and uncle, my neighbors are my cousins and my next-door neighbor is my other sister. It’s always been this dynamic. In grade nine, when I entered a new school with none of my friends from middle school, I was scared and felt alone – but quickly, I found a family again. I had gained three best friends within the first month of school. Over time, we grew very close and became a core group. In grade 10, another one joined us, and I had a tightly knit four-pack of sisters. We always prided ourselves on how honest and genuine we were with each other. We didn’t succumb to the pressures of gossip and fake friendships that high school was well-known to generate.
Time flew by and before we knew it, we were in grade 12 preparing to leave high school. I thought I had it all: my four sisters, a boyfriend, and a pretty good grip on life. I’ve come to realize that right when you think everything is together, it begins to fall apart. I had forgotten what friendship and family was really about – loving each other. Just before New Year’s of 2017, everything crumbled. I had been really busy with day school, night school, and balancing my boyfriend with my friends. It had evidently piled around me and I had suffocated myself. One day, my three best friends stopped speaking to me, and for the next five months, we didn’t speak at all. I won’t discuss the nitty gritty details of it all, because that is not what this is about. What I will say is that it was the hardest five months of my entire life, finding a prom dress without my best friends’ advice, struggling to find weekend plans every week, having no one to vent to about school and university prep stress, spending “grad trip” alone in my bedroom, and spending every lunch alone in the library working. I watched my three best friends go to parties, travel for vacation, and hang out together without me. I felt like the biggest loser there was.
Despite losing my “family,” I persevered. As if I was in survival mode, I pushed myself to make stronger connections with my friends outside of school, I talked to people I would’ve never approached before, and I made plans with people I barely knew. I joined my school paper, I got on the honor roll, and I got into Queen’s with a scholarship. Losing my friends allowed me to gain what I never knew I could have. After five long months, my best friend from abroad came home and asked that we all come back together to see her. We ended up reuniting as four refined and grown-up women who came back together stronger than before. Although I wouldn’t call them my family now, we’re still friends to this day. I thank whatever higher power there is that I lost my best friends for give months, because I gained something so important: I learned the true value of friendship and family. I learned that I deserve respect and love, and if I have friends who don’t understand that, then I simply need better friends. I learned how to put myself out there confidently, despite all my anxiety inside. I learned to put myself first, because you are your own everything and you don’t need people to complete you. I had forgotten that unlike family, you have the power to choose your friends and the people whom you surround yourself with. We often don’t have much control in our lives, so we should take advantage of the things that we can control.
Fast forward to present-day: my second year at Queen’s. I pushed the reset button on my friends again. I moved in with three other girls whom I didn’t know until our first day of living together, and they quickly became the best people in my life. All the friends I have now, I would proudly call my sisters. I exclusively choose to surround myself with people who reciprocate my love for them. Experiencing the worst five months of my life allowed me to understand my own values and morals. I don’t have to settle for disrespectful friends who don’t value me just because of my crippling fear of loneliness. I am a true believer that sometimes everything has to fall apart in order to come back together better. I lost all my best friends once, but from it I gained so much more in return.