Embedded Files
By Hanna Dang
I sit there on my chair, computer in front of me with my teacher speaking about the next assignment that was also due the next day, my phone lights up from a text message. Oh, it’s one of my friends, or is it really? My “friends” always text about homework, “What’s the answer for the math homework?” or “Can you help me with this response?”
I had been so focused on keeping my grades up that I didn’t know the drifting strings that tie me and my friends together are ripping apart. I wondered how I could let that happen, was it that I was too committed to my school work? Was it me? Will I ever go back to normal?
I brushed it off, thinking that once we go back to in-person school that everything will go back together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, that everything will go the way I had always envisioned it to.
Now I think back, what was the real reason I never talked to my friends during online school? So I wondered, did other people feel or experience the same feelings as me?
Annie: “I didn’t stay connected to a lot of people just because it was kinda hard to online especially when I wasn’t that close to them, but I tried to facetime a lot of my friends, and call, or like even just text because I think that it's really important to just like talk to people because without that your just like not going to see each other or anything so it the only way of contact.”
Annie’s experience had some similarities with mine, but that one thing I didn’t do that Annie did do: reach out first.
Maybe I felt shy, or it was a hassle to talk to people. I don’t know, I just knew that my school friends I would talk to all the time wouldn’t reach out to me like they did before. Then I thought that maybe it was stress that was kicking in, not just me, but everyone.
Annie: “I think I have been very not talking to my friends recently because of how stressed and tired I have been…yeah, I hope that will change in the future.”
Even now that students are back in school, Annie is too tired to even talk to her friends. I honestly felt the same way. During online classes, my eyes would feel so tired and after school, the teachers would give us a lot of homework to do online which made my eyes want to jump out of my face even more.
Even so, I tried my best to keep in touch with some people. I made a discord server where people in my grade would join and talk if they needed help with anything. I would post what the homework was every day since the teachers would give a lot every day, no one would remember so in their stead, I did it. I think that my way of “staying connected” was not really what I thought it would be.
Annie: “I think that I felt a lot of disconnections with my school friends because I think that I only really got to see them at school and I only talk to them in school so all my friendships that are just….like that I never really got to see them again until I got back to school so that kinda hurt. I didn’t do much about it because honestly I don’t think that…I can bring myself to talk to them because it was kinda hard not having anything in common other than school.”
Maybe that's why I thought it would be a good idea to start this discord server. I could feel close to my classmates while talking about the latest assignment we just got or what we will be doing in each class.
Photo Credit: Hanna Dang
That's how I got to where I am now. Many texts about homework answers or help, I was getting too tired to help people, sometimes I would burst at them but apologize later. Still, I stress about not meeting people’s expectations of knowing everything, I was drowning in my own actions.
That’s when I felt really alone. My outbursts are getting worse and sometimes I would start crying out of nowhere, most likely out of loneliness but even until today I am not sure.
That made me think: do people really understand what it means to be a good friend to someone? This time, it was everybody else's actions that made me have these feelings. So not only that, it made me think about friendship in general. Do people know what it means to be a good friend?
My experiences with friends are not the best, but not the worst. Still, I have always been a quiet person and people don’t check up on me that offen, I understand that though, I don’t blame them. I just wish they included me in their group activities.
I asked Annie, what does she think makes a bad friend? I wanted to know, was the experience I had experienced before that bad or was it all in my imagination?
Annie: “Just someone that makes you feel bad for liking stuff or that leaves you out of things even though they know that you wanna be included.”
Photo Credit: Mikayla Saquiton
After realizing that maybe my friends were not the best of them, I felt dejected. No, that’s not the word to describe it, I felt lost. I didn’t know what to feel, think, or do. I started to blame all of these on me.
I felt like I was the problem. Why couldn’t I talk like everyone else? Why can’t I not feel awkward with someone I know? My mind was racing, at one point I started to hate what friendship is.
I didn’t have the courage to fix any of it. “Get through it”, “It will be over soon.” These words play in my head on repeat even if I know they were just empty lies, I just wanted to avoid having to talk to people.
At times I felt hopeful, there were some people who would reach out to me, especially when I had lost a close family member of mine, but they were doing it the wrong way.
Annie: “Don’t push me to talk about like anything because I think that it just makes it so much worse, especially if I’m already going through something. I think that…trying to like get something out of me just makes me a lot more upset and makes me not want to say anything.”
That was exactly what everyone did. Those times I felt hopeful no longer felt like the hopeful sparks I feel from time to time. I kept telling myself that it isn’t their fault and that they didn’t mean it that way, but I’m human, humans look for a getaway, something to blame so I blamed people in general.
At that time I thought having no friends would be better and not even talking to people. This took me time to get this wrapped around my head because I wanted to be liked by others. My family members often tell me to have friends so when in times of need, they are there for me, but I felt even if I had friends, no one was there by my side.
Then someone talked to me, through text of course, but they were different from how the others would talk to me. It made me feel like I wasn’t alone in all of this after all.
They told me that it's fine to feel that way, everyone feels the same. It’s okay to not know everything in the world, you're human, people tend to forget that.
This made me realize that I could make mistakes, I am more open to options than I thought I was. Not just me, but everyone is not perfect. They could make mistakes that they didn’t even know they made so give everyone, no matter what they did, a second chance to make up for what they had done.
After that, with an open mind I started getting back on track and started talking to my friends again, even if I couldn’t see them, it was better than nothing. Now that I am here, I feel really…tired, but better than before so I think I’m going to log off!
All songs used in podcast(in order):
“Forget” by Lezfm
“Price of freedom” by ZakharValaha
“Far from home acoustic version” by Madirfan
“Both of us” by Madirfan
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