Floater

Do you ever feel like nobody needs you? Like you could disappear, but nothing would change and no one would notice?

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Minerva is a cool place with cool people, but sometimes I can't help but wonder whether I'll still be friends with some of these people at the end of four years or not. Or two years. Or for the rest of my life.

Friendships naturally start and end, but some last. And more often than not, the ones that last, are your childhood friends- and/or your college ones.

M22 has students from all over the world. There are about 150 of us and 51 distinct nationalities represented. Even if friends from college are the ones that are going to last, how likely is it that after college we will actually see each other very frequently? It just seems probable. I know I should be investing in making friends that are going to last but how probable is it that those people are the ones that will actually take the conscious effort to remember you when you're not right in front of them 24/7?

Some people say that I have too high standards lol. I guess "friend" means a little more to me than it does to most.

We had a sort of dance party thing that SXP organized, and first of all, I don't really fare well in large group gathering things- especially when mass dancing and music is involved. I genuinely try to, and have, on several occasions. But every time, without exception, I can't seem to find myself in that scene. My personality disappears and my character becomes mute and I don't know how to act. Secondly, and more importantly, nearly everyone from our class was present.

I don't know if my friends looked for me, but I definitely looked for them. What I do know is that even if they did look, they weren't the ones that found me.

Most of it I just spent standing by myself awkwardly or, on a special occasion, standing with other people awkwardly.

I think it's totally my fault though. I don't remember who told me this, but I remember someone saying that some people never find their "group" of friends. Some people just end up being the people who float between groups and connect them, and never really belong to just one group.

I remember when the person brought it up, I was very insistent that I was not this person. I was not a floater. I'm cool. I have a group. Kind of. It's still only the first semester, it's just too early to find my group but I know it'll happen eventually.

And in highschool I think it kind of did, but it was definitely not in my freshman year, and it definitely took a while for me to believe the group had my back.

I'm hoping it'll be the same in college, but right now the situation don't look so hot :(

I can point to three distinct groups of people that I hang out with regularly. And there are definitely people that I am closer to in some groups than in others, but there is not one group that I feel completely at home in.

I don't feel like no matter when or where, I could call them all to hang out or just be there. At the dance party thing they didn't invite me to join them, and even though I didn't expect them to, I guess a part of me still hoped. Because even if I didn't dance to jumpy pop songs, those cliques do e v e r y t h i n g together, and thus, it made sense why I wasn't in that everything.

Maybe that's the con of being the floater. No one group truly needs you to complete the group. The pro would probably be the diversity of friends and friend groups and the ability to connect groups, but other than that, I don't see much depth in not belonging to a singular group.

I know Ben Nelson always talks about not forming cliques and not hanging out with the same people all the time, but there is a good reason that people do it. Because when you do everything together, you become family, and family always comes first right? If you share all of these common memories, then you have more opportunities for inside jokes, and understood preferences, and nuanced conversations, and ultimately comfort.

It's comfortable to be in a clique.

And right now I don't remember why that's a bad thing.