finding friends & being alone

Hi loves,

I could have made this two separate posts but I thought I’d link them together as I want to talk about both today. I’m sat in my room right now with the windows open and it’s the most beautiful day, there’s not a cloud in the sky, I can hear birds outside and there’s a slight warm breeze rolling in through my window. I’m feeling really inspired and creative, sometimes I get these spouts of inspiration when I’ve been watching a lot of the people I look up to – Emma Mercury, The Messy Heads etc. and I thought I’d make this post because it’s something I’ve thought about for years now but I’ve never really wrote about it I guess, I have touched upon it in past journal entries and stuff but that was more when I was in a sad mood and nothing was really coherent, I was just spilling everything out onto the page and feeling very lost. I still feel like that and I still make those types of journal entries, but I wanted to make this post more talkative and something I could discuss, rather than feel sad about.

It’s all about finding people, I don’t want to get into too much detail with it because it’s a very long story and I’m trying to make this post a little inspiring, so, a long story short – when I left I school I didn’t really know what to do with myself or which direction I was going in. I moved from my regular high school when I was 14 and the close friends I had there I drifted from, when I moved to this new school for the remaining two years of my education I made lots of new friends but by the end of the journey, I realised they weren’t true friends. I’d known this for a long time and so had they, but we just stuck it out because we didn’t want to cause drama or tension – this meant that when we left school we didn’t stay in contact with each other (we weren’t right for each other and it was toxic and pointless to stay in each other’s lives).

When you leave school, you have two options – get a full time job or continue your education into college to get further qualifications so that you’re able to attend university if you want to. I didn’t want to attend university and I also didn’t want to go to college because despite the fact I loved learning and being educated on things, the schooling system definitely wasn’t for me. Being stuck inside a classroom suffocated by four walls and surrounded by people who couldn’t care less about being there really wasn’t my cup of tea, I was a dreamer, a wanderer. I wanted to get out into the world and explore, to learn from experience rather than an education system that showed me everything was black and white and made me feel like if I didn’t conform to the standards and textbook answers they were looking for, I wasn’t good enough. I also didn’t want to attend college because I knew so many of the people there from my old school and I really didn’t want to go back to that place, not because there were ill feelings or because I’d been bullied or anything, but just because it was an old chapter in my life that I wanted to move on from, I wanted to start a fresh. I constantly have this urge to start over all the time, to run away to a place where no one knows my name and be anybody that I want to be. I didn’t want to go back to people that were in my past, they were there for a reason.

In conclusion, I was stuck – I mentioned the option of getting a job (something we call an apprenticeship) when you leave school but at the time I was unaware this was in fact an option for me, so therefore my belief was that the only thing I could do was the same thing that everyone else was doing – go to college.

I was distraught, I was racking my brains wondering what I was going to do. Everyone else knew what they were doing, where they were going, what subjects they were studying. I on the other hand didn’t want to do any of these things but at the time didn’t have any other choice, and due to having a lot of toxic and fake friends from just having left school, I didn’t particularly fancy then going to college with them either. I had one true friend who I knew I could trust, my options were to go to college with her or stay where I was and just ride it out. As much as I wanted to be with my friend, I knew it wasn’t the right thing for me to do. I would have been doing it more for her than for myself because I had no interest in being there other than for us to see each other and like I said – college was going to be swarmed with people from my past and I wanted to stay away.

My only remaining option was to just ride it out and remain where I currently was, I stayed on for an extra year at school (sixth form – pretty much the same thing as college but you remain at school) and wasted a year there. Technically I was just hanging around, there weren’t many people in my year and I already knew all of them because I’d gone to school with them – this meant I had no chance to meet new people and make new friends to make up for all the fake ones I’d lost previously, so now I was left with just the one friend, one person I could trust. I had acquaintances, I had people who I’d chat with and things like that, but in terms of hanging out and spending time with people – I only did that with one person. I had no problem with this, but I wanted us both to have a friendship group again, people we could go on adventures with who shared the same interests as us, but it felt like an impossible task.

After the extra year I wasted at school, I discovered the option of actually getting a job – I did this and I’ve been working full time for two years now, I really enjoy it. However, again, the problem is that the people I work with are a lot older than me, married with kids – some even with grandchildren. It’s hard to find people to connect with and hangout with when they’re all adults a lot older than I am. Another opportunity missed because this didn’t present me with the option of being able to meet new and like-minded people.

Fast forward to right now when I’m sat in my room, writing this – I’m still looking for my people. The true friend I mentioned previously went to university and we drifted a lot, it really took its toll on our friendship and we don’t really speak anymore. I spend a lot of time alone but I’m definitely not lonely, I spend time creating, reading, writing, educating myself, listening to music, going on drives, all the things that I love to do. Of course I’d love to find friends to share these experiences with, I’d love to go on drives and little adventures with someone, to lie in the middle of fields looking up at the clouds and talking about the creation of the universe and the reasons we’ve been given these funny little lives of ours. I’d love to go thrifting with someone, grab coffee and sit at a table writing in journals, pick out clothes for each other, wear funky hairstyles and do each other’s glittery makeup – I’d love to share my creativeness with someone else, someone who thinks the way I do, someone who wants to dream and wander and create true friendship that will last a lifetime. I’m having a really hard time finding people, I know they’re out there and I know there’s lots of them around, I’m just struggling to make that first connection and to take that first step. I’ll find my people someday and until then, I’m just going to continue doing what I love and welcome anyone that wants to embark on this crazy little journey with me.

I hope this post makes sense, if you’ve managed to make it this far then I appreciate you so much for taking the time to read this !! I hope if you’re feeling the same way I do then this makes you a little happier, and remember to always stay you, you crazy little dreamers.

All my love,

Chloe .xx