I have never been able to make friends easily and, until recently, there was always a way to force me to go out and interact with other people such as school, work, etc. When I decided to move to a new city with new people, I knew that it wouldn't be easy to find friends. I found myself worrying about how I was going to meet people my age. I am no longer in school, so that was out. I'm a nanny, so unless I wanted my new friends to be around two years old, then that was out. To add to all of this, I have always struggled with anxiety, specifically social anxiety.
Though some may boil this mental illness down to shyness, for me it was was much more extreme. Just imagine that feeling you get in the middle of the night after you have finished a scary movie. You turn off the lights and every sound is a murderer, every movement is a ghost out to get you. Now this is what it feels like to me when I meet new people. Every word is dangerous, every sound is someone judging me or trying to hurt me. My fear has been extreme. My adrenaline would rush, sometimes it felt like my blood stopped moving, and often I felt like I couldn't breathe. Experiencing extreme fear like this all the time often left me exhausted and avoiding many places that caused my social anxiety to spike.
At 21 years old, I was really struggling with meeting people. Then about two weeks into my move, "Pokémon Go" was released on the App Store. My inner child has never been happier and I spent most of the time wandering the streets searching for Charmanders. My favorite part of the app surprised me, though. The app requires the user to go out to certain spots to battle, or to refill your Pokéballs, which means that when going to these places, users often run into each other.
I started making friends. Everywhere I went playing this game, I would run into others like me trying to catch 'em all. For the first time since my move, I hadn't felt terrified about making new friends. Because I played, I was making them.
The app also provides topics of conversation, so I'm not left wondering what I am going to say or if another person will think I am too nerdy or too obsessed or weird. It created a community, one where leaving my house and talking to others did not cause my blood to stop moving or my breathing to stop. While many think that this app is just for those who never grew up or are just lazy children, they have no idea what it can do for people. For me, it made a new town that felt like a horror movie of new people, with no way to interact, into a community of people that I could not only relate to, but enjoy as well.
