I’ve always had a difficult time making friends. As a little kid, I remember being very outgoing and sociable (though my mom and other family members tell me otherwise) but also very precocious and someone who enjoyed plumbing the depths of my own mind, reading and discussing ideas and facts, both meaningful and trivial, with other people. When you’re 7-years-old, you’ll find that most of your peers don’t want to hear about the Latin roots of words or fun facts that you’ve picked up from reading trivia books. Instead, they view you as a weirdo, or a show-off.

As I grew older, the opposite problem seemed to arise. While I had always been very introverted, I had an outgoing personality that balanced my introversion and made it more socially acceptable. With time, however, my sociability and confidence seemed to fade, leaving me with the desire to spend most of my time alone. Though I was incredibly lonely, I felt too anxious to interact with people on a casual level, and too inferior to interact with them on an academic or intellectual level. This sense of inferiority and just general sadness continued through middle school, high school and even the first half of my first year at college. This is something that I still struggle with but feel grateful that I managed to secure a couple of friends during my first year who gave me the encouragement and confidence to continue on in school, to drag myself out of the house everyday. While each held a different role in my life during the past year, they were all instrumental in getting me through an emotionally draining period.

There is one friend who I affectionately refer to as “my stalker.” At the beginning of my first year, she decided we were meant to be friends, whether I liked it or not. I spent most of my first year out of my house, either attending meetings or studying. Without fail, she would show up to my room almost every single day looking to find me and, without fail, my roommate would tell her that I wasn’t there. Her persistence eventually paid off, however, and we ended up becoming incredible friends and eventually roommates. She was the first person at school who saw me cry and the first person who told me that everything was going to be okay.

I made another amazingly good friend through a ton of classes we had in common. After class one day, we got to talking and realized that we lived in houses right across from each other. From that point on, we were each other’s built-in study partners, which turned in to a friendship as we discovered that we shared a love of frank conversation, Netflix and general goofiness. I can always count on her to make me laugh, but also to dish out the cold, hard truth when I need it.

Finally, there are what I call my supremely connected friends. These are the friends who I rarely get to see because of our busy schedules, but with whom I have a deep, almost psychic connection. Even after spending months without talking to them or seeing them in person, we can pick up right where we left off. It’s almost as if time paused for us during these periods and, once we meet again, we can simply hit the play button again. I truly feel like we have a connection that transcends space and time and am grateful for that.

All my friends are incredibly precious to me and I honestly don’t know how I would have made it through my first year of college. I suppose I can sum up my message to all of them in just a few sentences: I love you like my family. Thank you for being in my life and I can’t wait to see what the next chapters of our friendship love story hold.