The Power of Friendship

Sometimes, love lasts forever

I’m an army brat, the youngest child of my mother and I have anxiety. All of that sums up to one overarching experience in my early formative years - crippling loneliness. I can still remember, with almost worrying clarity, the days when I would play with my coat on the playground. The coat acted as a stand-in friend because I was too shy to go up to other kids and ask to play with them. The way I presented at school made parents evenings awkward. My parents struggled to reconcile the conflicting versions of me that I oscillated between. I had always been reserved but at home I was verbose and facetious. Yet, at school, teachers were saying I was a borderline selective mute who would burst into tears at the mention of a mental maths test.

Playing with my coat lasted for a couple of years until my classmates realised I was fast. Not to brag, but I was really fast. And if you know anything about British primary schools in the early 2000s, being the fastest girl in your year group creates a special type of social currency. I was no longer left to languish at break time and lunchtime, I was the first person captains wanted on their team for bulldog, and even during wet play, people still wanted to be around me so that we could discuss which teams we would be on for bulldog if the weather improved.

When I transitioned to secondary school, I had hoped everything would change. I played football and did athletics and was even head prefect; the loneliness persisted. I still felt ostracised. I never whispered about crushes on boys whilst sleeping over at my friend’s house. I never liked boys, I wasn’t allowed to have sleepovers and I didn’t have any friends that I was close enough with to even be in that situation.

It took getting to sixth form where I really began to crack the code to friendship. I met my best friend, while she waited outside of our head of year’s office. I was leaving the study centre and whilst walking with my other friend, who she knew, she asked for my name and what A-Levels I was doing. I was shocked. It’s not that people were particularly mean. But I tended to fade into obscurity when in big groups, so I was often the person that just lingered when my friends were talking to new people.

In smaller groups and 1-1 situations, I’m very talkative. So much so that my friends think I’m lying about being shy, because I just don’t stop talking. It was in these contexts that I found many of the friends that I still have today. Finding, forming and sustaining friendships became easier for me at this stage because I was learning more about myself. I had accepted that I was different in some ways; instead of using this difference as a way to continue in isolation, I sought out and clung to people who shared these differences or championed them.

University.

With the brief insight I have given into my social skills, I’m sure you can understand why I dreaded going to university. Of course, I was excited to learn, to take advantage of the opportunity to be surrounded by geniuses. But I was nervous. So nervous. I worried how I would fare not being in close proximity to my sister. Previously, I knew I had my sister to depend on. To come back to and feel love and connection and friendship. But with her gone, what would I do?

I found my answer soon enough. I attended summer school just before university and met my first male friend. We were doing icebreakers and informally formed an alliance, bonding over the fact that we are both Jamaican and from East London. He thought I didn’t like people because I wasn’t speaking much, I replied that I’m just shy. And we’ve been friends ever since, he endeavoured to look out for me and has become like a brother since then. We were joint at the hip, to the extent that in the first few weeks of term, when people would see one of us alone they would ask where the other was.

However, as much as I thought I was making progress, I still struggled to make friends at university. I came with some people from sixth form, and that created complacency. I did not make an effort to create new connections, I didn’t even do the things that I enjoyed, that had characterised teenaged Adrienne. I felt too shy to do anything, and it wasn’t the endearing kind of shy. It was debilitating, it left me paralysed, unable to do anything outside of what I was accustomed to. When I saw people that I knew making friends, I wondered how they did it. I questioned if there was a secret pamphlet that everyone had access to that I was omitted from.

And then, very quickly, life changed.

I became determined to make my university experience fulfilling, and in the simplest way, I just started doing stuff. When opportunities were offered to me, I said yes. When in anxiety-inducing, big social groups, I came prepared. I had a mental flashcard which I defaulted to when making conversation with new people, it included; my name, my degree, the college I attended and my thoughts on it and potential questions to ask - like any possible mutuals we share and their experience at university so far.

The significance that friendship held in my life ballooned. And this wasn’t just about the new additions. I realised what I had to do to maintain and strengthen the nascent friendships that had been formed just before I arrived at university. I didn’t have much relationship experience so I conceived friendship as akin to taking care of a plant. Food, sunlight and care. This translated to loving my friends in the way they know, spending lots of time with them and showing them I care. It was easy to do because I received it tenfold, it was a process of learning and applying.

In a year which has been challenging, love has been my biggest reprieve. Love from my family and my friends has made dim days end with a smile and good days feel endless.

Friendship was my friend giving me shots of white rum, rubbing my back and wiping my tears when my first relationship broke down. It was also my friend coming to celebrate me finishing my exams, with a big group of people despite her social anxiety. Friendship was my friend being the first person to ever read my Substack posts and providing detailed feedback after each read. Friendship was my friend withholding judgement and opening me up to the idea of Bible Study and reconnecting with God. Friendship was me and my friend exchanging pickup lines with each other because we were bored out of our minds and did not have anyone else to practice them on. It was my friend cooking meals that reminded me of home and sharing her favourite tv series with me when I felt overwhelmed. Friendship was my friend allowing me and my cousin to get ready with her while preparing for the summer garden party. It was my friend easing my worries about an upcoming graduate job interview by listening to my incoherent, anxious rambles.

Friendship is love. It has saved my life and rebuilt my sanity on more occasions than I can count.

These are my friends and I love them. I hope this love lasts forever.