For a lot of my life (not that it's been that long), I have had times where I felt as if I did not have enough friends. I think pretty much everyone has felt that way at some point. I still feel a little bit like that to this day sometimes. There was also a time when I had no close friends at all whatsoever. I remember looking through the contacts in my phone in my 17 year old state of boredom-induced depression, thinking "there is not a single person in here I could call right now." But pity party over, because I wouldn't take that time back. As awful as it was, it taught me the importance of friendships and how to treat people properly in order to keep them close.
These days, I feel like I have finally found my "group". I have a very level-headed core group of friends who do nothing but bring me up, never down. We are all extremely driven to have a high level of success in our individual endeavors, which means we keep each other motivated because we see each other working hard. My best friends are my biggest cheerleaders for everything I do, and I try to be theirs.
When faced with the possibility of spending my summer in New York City at an internship I probably couldn't have even dreamed possible to exist, I thought "this is not something you could ever do, Sarah." In my eyes, I could never imagine doing something that terrifying; I'm the anxious, quiet girl who is susceptible to panic attacks when laying in my own bed. I trip over my own feet at least twice a day. I find it difficult to speak at a volume that can reach the average persons ear. I could not go to New York...I would be begging my parents to let me fly back two days in. My friends thought otherwise. The amount of times I heard "you have to go to New York" come out of their mouths is not a countable number. They drilled it into my head so that I started to believe I actually could be able to do it. And now I'm going to do it, the horribly scary thing; but thanks to my friends I am no longer thinking of it only in that way...maybe it won't just be horribly scary. Maybe it will be a life-altering adventure. And I know I have to give myself some credit, but I would be in such a state of disarray without my closest friends. As one of my best friends likes to put it when talking about our friendship "without you, I would be drunk under my desk."
The point of this story is, surrounding yourself with people who will outright tell you they are proud of you, that you can do it, that they believe in you; those are the kinds of people to have in your life. And I am eternally grateful I have them.
