The prompt for this piece was to write about something that has happened to me in the last year, that has had a significant effect on me.
In movies set in high school, everyone has friends. Even the weird outcast. It’s expected that you have a group or at the very least a best friend. I’ve had a group of friends for as long as I can remember. Even when I entered high school and my group splintered a little, I still believed that I would find a new one, and I did. I felt confident in the fact that come grade twelve, we would be picking prom dresses side by side, going on March Break together, and calming each other down during the stressful mess that is applying to university. But as many of us have and will discover, the universe often likes to pull down its pants and show you exactly what it thinks of your expectations.
It was the November of grade eleven and I could feel it coming. Things had been tense for the last month. I was about to be friend-dumped. It started with small arguments and escalated to being ignored and lied to about plans. Finally the overstretched elastic that was my group, my girls, snapped. All of a sudden, I was group-less and alone for the first time since Junior Kindergarten. It was like being agonizingly single, except instead of seeing couples in love everywhere, I saw tight-knit groups of friends. The first few months were hard. At the beginning, I comforted myself with the possibility that maybe nobody had noticed my group had abandoned me. As the months went on, I got better at being alone and recognizing others like me. Nobody tells you how hard it is to make friends after 14. I found myself fervently wishing all I had to do to make friends was to give someone a turn with the blocks.
Now, I can look back and say that becoming a one woman wolf pack helped shape me and my definition of friendship. It made me value those who love me and it taught me an important, albeit harsh, lesson. When it comes to friendship, it is always quality over quantity.
Word count: 345
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