Friendships had always been a struggle for me. I had made some lovely friends over the years but I had a lot of trust issues and I’ve always suffered from Imposter syndrome where I am waiting for people to realise I am a massive fake, a nothing.
It always seemed easier to keep friends at arms’ length. It meant I was safer and I wouldn’t get hurt. I know all the issues were mine and not theirs. I know it was something that I had to break down myself to get past. I had tried for years to soften and let people in but it sometimes didn’t work out for me. Then I moved to Canada.
Here I could make a fresh start. No one was going to be pre judging me on what they had heard about through other people or what they knew of me throughout my childhood. I had a challenging time through my formative years with friends so it was going to be a big deal for me to make some true friends.
I met my tribe through the theatre show I was choreographing. We connected pretty quickly and soon I was being invited over for drinks, going to Karaoke nights, and getting up to a lot of mischief together. I was 24 and I felt like I could finally be honest without the fear of rejection.
I’m not really sure how I come across to people. In my head I am just me. I vacillate between super enthusiastic about things to the point of obsession to being completely apathetic. I don’t know if that is “normal” but it depends on the subject as to what “me” you get. For example if you talk to me about sports my eyes start to glaze over. I feel an overwhelming need to be anywhere but there and I make a lot of u-huh noises. If you talk about politics you will get a similar response, well at least when I was 24 you would. But if you talked about movies, actors, life stories and traveling then I would be 100% engaged and would talk over everyone at the table. The problem with that is that I am painfully aware that I can take over a conversation. I don’t mean to, I just get really excited. I know people take that the wrong way. Well I found a group who didn’t take it the wrong way, in fact they embraced my personality with all its quirks and I felt like I belonged for the first time.
The Wedding Dress Tea Party was planned for weeks. It was a chance to wear fancy wedding garb one more time. We spent a glorious sunny afternoon in the garden eating strawberry shortcake and drinking tea while I was wearing an op shop bridesmaid dress and we swanned around the garden with flowers in our hair. Having grown up in my literary world, which was my sanctuary, this was reminiscent of Anne of Green Gables and her kindred spirit Diana. I was perfectly happy.
We spent all our time together and shared intimate details, it was so refreshing to have such an open friendship and to this day I am in contact with these beautiful souls.
This chapter is about friendship because that was the pivotal part of my solo trip. There are other stories that happened when I lived in Canada for 12 months but the enduring emotion and the one that had the most impact when I drove to airport to head home was total heartbreak at leaving my beautiful new friends behind. I cried buckets for days. My heart hurt so much that I can still feel that pain in my chest when I think about it.
For the first time I had been able to be just me and people saw that me and they still wanted to be my friend. Incredible.
Part 5 will be the final part in this series
