Until very recently, I never felt like I belonged anywhere. My family is very strained, so I never wanted to be close to them or even be at home, and throughout school I bounced around from friend group to friend group. College was a big learning curve when it came to finding my community, but I finally did and I am more than happy to share my story of finding my community to you all today.
In elementary school, I switched schools. Twice. Right off the bat, that made making and solidifying friendships sort of hard. I had some friends that my mom made for me in kindergarten, but when I switched schools, I lost touch with them pretty quickly. In elementary school, I made friends via my mom again, or what I thought were friends. What I didn’t know is that they would often make fun of me behind my back, and while they were nice to me to my face, they were always plotting a new way to tease me and embarrass me at recess. They pushed me into bees’ nests, tackled me during Jackpot, and even made a game where everyone had to avoid me all day. Needless to say, I was often alone at recess. Even though I laughed along with the other students and my teachers, it hurt me and my confidence for a long time.
In the fifth grade, I switched schools again, back to the school I went to Kindergarten in. I was Riley all over again. The friends that my mom made for me all those years ago were still there, but while I remembered them, they definitely did not remember me, and found it very weird that I would try and play with them at recess like “old times”. I eventually found a group of girls that I would go through most of middle school with, but they too bullied me and often got me into trouble. I realized that it was best to let go of them going into eighth grade. I made a new group of friends and they were very kind and I still talk to most of them today, but we had very little in common, so we never really got close.
In high school, I had a different group of friends every year. They were all very nice people, but I never felt like I quite “fit” with any of the groups I entered, as we had little in common. I started to isolate myself like Elsa did when she built her tower, thinking that I didn’t deserve to be anybody’s friend. I graduated high school with no pictures of me and my friends, and I realized then that I was going off to college with really no friends from home. That made me determined to make the most amount of friends that I could in college.
These experiences and upcoming new changes made me realize what I was looking for in a community. In my community, I want to feel safe and respected. I want to be able to laugh with others around me and not be the butt of the joke. I want to get silly with my community, but I also want to get real. My community should be a place where I can share my personal struggles and they can lift me up to overcome them. No one should ever feel like they are on the outside looking in. My community is a family, and I will love them as such.
In addition to figuring out what I wanted in a community, I also realized that no matter how alone I was feeling, I knew that there was always going to be someone there to assure me that I belong: God. No matter how alone I feel, I know that I am part of a bigger story. I have gone through all of these struggles for a reason, and that they are also pieces that are needed to complete my puzzle. No matter what, God will always love me and make me feel like I belong.
I started off college with a retreat called FIRST which gave me automatically 40 new friends. I felt like the Toys in Toy Story 3 when Lotso Hugginbear welcomed them to their new home in Sunnyside. I was so happy and determined to keep all of these people in my life. I came to find out, however, that trying to do that would drive me crazy. I was terrified of being alone in this big, scary, new place, so I just latched on to whoever was kind to me. This mentality led me to a few friends who treated me like those kids in elementary school did, teasing and bullying me. I was a second semester freshman, feeling like I was nine years old again.
It took this smiley girl that I kind of knew from choir to bring me out of my shell. She invited me to her room before practice one day and introduced me to all of her friends. They were all so kind to me, and within a few days, I was tagging along to Late Night with them, laughing with them as if we had known each other for years. Since then, a few of us have drifted off, transferred, found other friends, and much else, but even with everything that life has thrown at us, I came to realize that I have finally found what I had been looking for ever since I had entered kindergarten: A sense of belonging. We each have our own unique qualities like Pooh Bear and his friends from the Hundred Acre Wood, but we all come together to make a great friend group. These girls are my sisters and my community. Even after losing some friends throughout my sophomore year, I ended up with an entirely new group of friends who I love dearly and cannot wait to spend my senior year with them. I love them more than life itself, and they have built me up where everyone else has tried to bring me down. They are my group of princesses. I have completely changed for the better, and I have my community to thank for it.