Once upon a time, I was an incoming college freshman who barely spoke or interacted with other humans. Social anxiety had a firm grip on me, and I never tried to battle it. On a whim, I decided that I was going to go away to school rather than stay at home. By some miracle or act of God, one girl gave the timid, socially awkward girl a chance at friendship.

Fast forward a few years, and this girl and I are still best friends. She helped me come out of my shell, introduced me to other people, and genuinely made me a better person. When we were juniors, everyone of my friends started to think about where to go abroad. Not surprisingly, I was too afraid to go anywhere since I feared that I would be too homesick and give up. I may have gotten out of my shell a little bit more, but that meant I was comfortable talking to people I knew in a social situation; under no circumstances did I blossom into this huge social butterfly.

So, the day my friend came over to tell me she was so excited that she was going to Cape Town, South Africa to study abroad, I internally panicked. I was of course happy for her and the adventure she was about to have, but the other half of me was like, "why are you trying to ruin my life?" The rest of the semester and following winter break was spent having severe anxiety about what was to come without my safety blanket around, and I began to distance everyone around me. I shut out the rest of the world, retreated into a corner, and let my relationships with other people weaken.

Around halfway through the semester without her, I decided I needed to get my act together. I had become a person that my mother worried far too much about, a person that was never any fun to be around, and a person that I did not believe my best friend would be proud to know and love. I decided I owed her better, and I could be better. I could not go the rest of my adult life latched solely on one person and never getting out of my comfort zone. So, I reached out to other people. I started talking to people that I had been acquaintances with. I would get lunch with them, or pregame a party with them, or make an effort to have a conversation over text with one person a day. And I pretended that every time I put my toe outside of my comfort zone I wasn't ready to vomit out of fear of rejection. And after a while, pretending I was okay turned into me actually being okay. I made new friends, strengthened other relationships that I would have otherwise turned the other cheek on, and became a more confident, independent person. And I not only made new friends, but I worked hard at keeping them, too. All of a sudden, I was no longer a person who relied on someone else for their happiness. I learned that me being happy had to come from myself, and not someone else.

I am not saying that this was easy. Trying to make new friends was, as silly as it is to say, one of the hardest things that I had to do. But the important thing is that when my best friend came home from abroad, she told me she was proud of me and the person I had become. All of the anxiety and all of the fear was worth it to hear that from her. I felt like a better person and friend to her by living up to the potential she had seen in me from the start. Without even trying, this girl had turned my life around and continued to make me a better person. So, my best friend, thank you for almost ruining my life, but still managing to be the person to make it all right again. Even from halfway across the world.