When I was 15 I was very insecure and lonely. I did have friends, and they were nice too, but it was always clear that I was an afterthought. Sometimes they'd include me last minute for things they planned in advance, they'd often say "the 4 of us" when we were with 5, they had lots of inside jokes I wasn't part of, etc. Do not get me wrong, they were always very lovely and I never got the impression that they were mean to me behind my back, but it always felt like they had to actively remember I was there. Fed up with feeling lonely, I decided to search for a friend on my own.
At first I contacted an old friend of mine. We had pretty similar interests, personalities, and he also gave of the semi-lonely vibe so I figured why not? It took us almost a year to become good friends but after that we really hit it off and I'd call him my current bestfriend. Looking back, it's kinda weird things even worked out because reading old messages, I was borderline harrassing him. Even though I had him, I wasn't satisfied after a while. I liked my friend but I wanted a group of friends to feel at home with. Thus started one of the weirdest periods in my life where I was just "recruiting" people in the weirdest ways?
The first one was an old elementary school classmate of mine. I stalked his social media and realised that we had grown to become pretty similar in terms of fashion and music taste. To have an excuse to meet up, I sent him a message asking him if he would be down to be interviewed for a school project regarding the atmosphere in my former classrooms. The twist? The project didn't even exist, I made it all up. During the "interview" I dropped some hints regarding things I knew he liked and from there we kicked things off. I've never told him it was a fake interview and as far as he's concerned, it's still true to this day.
The second one was someone from my school who regularly sat alone. I stumbled upon his art account and he often drew characters from shows I liked so I had to become friends with him. Instead of approaching him, like a normal human being would, I put myself in situations where I'd "coincidentally" have a reason to talk to him. Eventually it worked out though.
Next one was also someone from my school and she is someone I surprisingly just met pretty normally! She was the new girl in class and things clicked between us.
Last one was this girl that worked at my part-time job. The problem was that I worked every Saturday and sometimes during the breaks, meanwhile I had no idea what her schedule was. So what did 16 year old me do? I casually asked my boss to change my schedule to match hers. It was terrible. Got me working on some random Tuesdays after school. Looking back, he probably thought I had a crush on her and wanted to help me out but I'm still shocked he didn't find my request strange. From there I asked her to hang out outside of work sometimes and boom.
From there I stragetically introduced everyone to eachother 1 by 1 and eventually the group kinda took shape. I love them with all my heart and these people are some of the best things that have ever happened to me. They're the most loving, supportive, awesome, and funniest friend group I've ever had. Sadly I still have some underlying guilt since I kind of deceived most of them. It especially hits me when one of them says something along the lines of: "Isn't it crazy we all ended up together?". Because I know it isn't a coincidence. But I can't just reply: "Actually, I harrassed, set up fake interviews, stalked, and manipulated y'all to be my friends. Oh, almost forgot to mention I made literal mindmaps on how to introduce y'all to eachother to optimize the chances of creating this group. ?"
Other times I feel like I give myself too much credit, because if they didn't vibe with eachother this group wouldn't have existed anyway. I could try to force it as much as I want but to make it last they obviously need to like eachother. Either way, this guilt-feeling eats me up inside and even though this has been about 6-7 years ago, I wish I had approached things differently.
