1pg essays: HOW to make friends as an adult.
Fuck. I dunno.
Making friends in high-school was easy (though making friends in elementary was awful). In elementary I failed to make friends to such a degree that I spent many recesses reading a college level dictionary back to front as that was the only thing that challenged me at the time. In high-school it was simply being in the same classes and sharing a locker situation. I gathered the few every year, befriended a certain teacher, and had her reserve a small number of lockers near her class. She'd rather entertain a number of well-behaved nerds than some random assortment of jocks.
As an adult, the best results I've found? Replicating high-school. Even before I started streaming to make friends in the height of covid, I had found that creating small spaces that people liked to frequent to be the best manner in making friends. 2016 brought discord and that brought friendships. Before then, I had cultivated tabletop rpgs for the same function: creating spaces. I suppose that's the true answer. Spaces. Make a space for those important in your life to fill, and you create space for those to spend their time. I suppose high-school had it figured out: friendship isn't embedded in the highs and lows, but the daily places we choose to frequent from dawn to dusk. Schools. Work. A coffee shop on a corner. A discord for degenerates. A twitch stream with someone that will talk to you, manned by someone that needs the company.
But there's a difference in comfort. When it comes to a space you create, things are a little bit easier; since you're in control, you can cultivate your space. While that makes things easier, I've found it doesn't build the extroverted confidence you need. It's only when I've been in a space that doesn't necessarily belong to me, where I've had to push my boundaries to reach out, to learn, to grow, and to expand my horizons and perspective. I know people in my stream will like me. That's a given.
But will I be liked in a space that isn't mine? In a manner, those that frequent the spaces I've made are far braver than I—far more deserving of friendship than I myself. They've put themselves out there. In all the naked glory of anxiety and stress, they did their best to connect. On the throne, the queen sits alone. It is only as a pauper does she learn the skills to reach out, to connect, and perhaps show the most likeable version of herself to perhaps be accepted. Or crushed. Either or.
To learn to connect to others on their terms is perhaps the scariest act. To meet others where they are. To let go of the ego of likeability, to accept that you can do everything you can to be likeable, and to still be disliked. To understand you cannot force friendship. I feel Evangelion expressed friendships the best: we exist as hedgehogs, destined to hurt and be hurt in our pursuit of comfort, but without the pursuit itself our ego and our world become a similar size.
We stretch towards the flames of comfort, are burned, and are still expected to keep reaching. Tragic. Yet beautiful in its effort.
Anyways. Friendships are hard man.