This past week I had a had an important conversation with my roommate. I came home complaining about how dumb work was and how it had put me in a bad mood. She said to me “Doesn’t one of your friends work there?” I said yes they do, but that they didn’t seem to notice I was in a bad mood. This lead us to the topic of choosing friends that will help and encourage you to grow. Friends have always been an extremely important aspect of my life. I strive to surround myself with people who were willing to open up to me and willing to bare the past, present and future of my life. I’ve always thought of my friends as family, we listen to each other and offer support, advice, and love. All of my friends give me their honest opinions and thoughts when they know I need to hear it and help me to grow every single day. Coming to college I decided to go somewhere far away from all of my friends so that I could experience something new. This left me with the pressure of needing to find new friends in a foreign place. I took on the first people that I found I had even the slightest bond with, this has left me with hard decisions for the past couple of months as I am having to reevaluate who is actually contributing to my life. I have started to notice that not everyone I chose right off the bat is willing to help me grow the way my hometown friends do. I have had to take a step back and see how these friends are benefiting me. Now you may read this and think that I am being extremely selfish but a relationship goes both ways, and not just the romantic ones. I am willing to give out my love, advice, and support to those who do the same for me. It has taken me a little while to realize that I wasn’t picky enough my first year, I didn’t step back to see who has been helping me and who has been hurting me. The decision to say one of your friends isn’t caring about you like they should is an extremely hard one, but it is one that will benefit me in the end. I have decided that it has come to the time in my life where I need to decide who will stay and who will go. This doesn’t mean the friends that aren’t doing their part will be completely shut out of my life. This just means that I won’t be absorbing myself into their worlds that always seem to be filled with drama and apologies. My advice for this month is to take a step back and look around you. Do you feel like you have a solid support system? Are the friends you have now friends that you would like to have for the rest of your life?
