The Elephant in the Room: Are all my friends doing things without me?

Strength, I’ve found, comes in numbers. That being said, I am an unapologetic extrovert. When going through a rough patch, I tend to turn to others around me to either validate or commiserate with how I’m feeling. My roommate, Jess, can definitely attest to the fact that if I have a headache, or feel nauseous, or feel anxious, or have a tingle in my foot, I will ask whether or not she feels the same way. Don’t get me wrong though, I wasn’t necessarily born an extrovert; rather, it is the way that I have chosen to be.

Just as some recharge when they are alone, I recharge when I am with other people. Even if Jess and I are sitting silently in our beds watching our own Netflix show, it somehow feels better to me than if I was doing the exact same thing without her in the room. Maybe I want validation that I am not the only one just sitting around and watching TV. Or maybe I just want to double check that everyone isn’t hanging out without me. I couldn’t tell you why I am the way I am, but I have a constant fear that my friends will find me annoying or just decide to ditch me.

This is such an engrained thought process for me that I had a very vivid dream about it. This dream consisted of me walking into my closest friends’ room in our Wren suite and seeing boxes with all their stuff packed up. When I asked them what they were doing, they said, “We’re moving to Hodgdon, didn’t we tell you? We said it in the group chat!” But when I checked our group chat there was no sign of their departure message. Then the nightmare surfaced. “Oh, it must have been the other group chat,” one of them said. The fact that they had a group chat without me (in my dream) was absolutely devastating.

Granted, I have wonderful friends and I know they would never exclude me from a group chat or plans, but I still sometimes get that nagging feeling that I’m not good enough. It’s funny, I wrote my common application essay about a time in high school that a few girls that I was very close to ditched me as a friend and how I took that situation and turned it into a positive one for myself. Remember everyone, mean people don’t end up doing cool things with good people. Although I know that I have found some good eggs both at home and at Tufts, I still have to make sure that I am being a good friend myself. If I want people to like me, the solution is as simple as being a thoughtful and caring friend to them. If you are extroverted and you recharge with people like me, you also have to make sure those people are doing okay for themselves too.