Let me explain how I became my own best friend and how I continue this into adulthood.
When I was a teenager in high school, I didn’t have many friends. I often felt like I didn’t fit in completely with people my age. Everyone at this point seemed as if they knew who they were as a person, who they wanted to be with and how they wanted to be perceived. I for one simply wanted my books, my tv shows and my pets. I felt out of touch with my classmates and felt estranged compared to them all. The people I would hang around with would talk in detail of their first kisses, first… everything, their first cigarettes, first sips of alcohol. I genuinely couldn’t understand how they didn’t want to talk about books or the new Sherlock series. I often wondered if I was being too childish or if they were all growing up too fast and I didn’t get the memo.
From the ages of 14 to 16 I was truly by myself, in most ways though, happily so. I vividly remember my old geography teacher catching me in the toilets as I was wiping down my new Dr Martens I wore on non-school uniform day. She smiled and said something along the lines of “you’re different Sarah, you’re quirky” gesturing her hands up into some awkward jazz hands. What a terrible thing to say to a 15-year-old! I stood there and nodded before backing out of the doors with mud still scuffed up the side of my boots.
For a long time, I was upset that I didn’t belong. I wouldn’t want to go to school, I would spend my breaks with my English teacher and would hide out in the welfare building during P.E. (thank you to Ms Dak for lying to my teachers about my whereabouts). My mum sat me down one night with pictures of her 15-year-old self. Perm too tight, shirts so awkwardly bagged at her skirt, and turned to me saying “do you want to be a sheep?”.
No, I did not. In a way I probably shouldn’t have done it the way I did back then. I am not going to sit here and say ‘isolate yourself until you get to the point where you don’t care anymore’ but really those moments alone were what built me to be me today.
I went to the extreme with what I loved. I watched the hell out of those shows and wrote about them by myself. I wore exactly what I wanted even if it looked terrible. I sang musicals way too loud in the middle of the Minster Gardens. Saw plays by myself, went to see authors I loved by myself. What I wanted at 15 was to endeavour in things I loved to the maximum. As I did so, I slowly built a relationship with myself.
My mum phoned me the morning after the election results. I sat crying telling her it’s not the losing that hurt it was feeling outed, different, and not enough. ‘Sarah, do you want to be a sheep’ I told her no through my tears and found myself sat across from 15-year-old Sarah. In her terrible clothes, her Sherlock t-shirt, her books, and her scruffy fringe, smiling through the fact I am still the different one in many ways and that is okay.
My best friend sat across from me. She’s weird, but I love her.