"It's the friends you can call up at 4am that matter." - Marlene Dietrich

A constant thought on my mind lately has been how much not only my life has changed but how much I, as an individual have changed. When I was younger I suffered severely from social anxiety, I could never eat in the food court of shopping centers, I couldn't catch trains or buses anywhere and when I was starting primary school my family doctor suggested the primary school I went to because it was a smaller school and meant that I wouldn't be so overwhelmed. 

When I think about it now, I never had very many close friends during Primary School, I had a few friends outside of school, but I could probably could have counted all my friends with my fingers. Like most things in life this has changed so much. since then. I now have the most wonderful group of close friends and an uncountable amount of people who I can rely on. 

I still get anxious when I am going out with people, like I tend to forget things or spill things all over myself but I have managed to grow out of certain parts of my anxiousness. I now have no problem with public transport, food courts, being surrounded by people in tight places and most importantly I have completely lost my fear of meeting new people, which to some extent I think plagued me up until last year. I only made new friends when I had to and I still got really upset and worried, but now and especially over the past year, this has changed so much. 

I absolutely love meeting new people now, I have no problem with making conversation with strangers and I love going to parties and talking and getting to know new people. It's so crazy how my life has changed from being the girl who hated doing anything other than sitting in her room and reading her books to someone who loves going to parties and meeting new people, even if the friendships don't last longer than that night it still makes my younger self feel proud to know how far I have come and how much my life has changed. 

I honestly don't know what changed or this change occurred, but I feel like once I developed a solid support network outside of my family, that I knew I could depend on, and I wasn't so scared to meet people anymore. There is still always the feeling where in my head all I can think is "do these people really want to be here with me?", bur I guess that as I continue to grow and face new challenges I'll be able to overcome this fear and put those voices to bed, permanently. 

Being courageous is hard but I tell myself two things, I tell myself you'll regret it if you're not courageous now and a life with regrets is a life  not lived. The second thing I tell myself is that people actually want to spend time with me, people go out of their way to do nice things for me and the thoughts you are thinking are just in your head, even as I write this I am questioning myself, I'm questioning whether what I'm saying is actually true, but I'm letting the stronger side of me take control and letting myself believe that what I'm saying is true because in the end you can only have faith and hope in people, and have faith and hope in yourself, because in situations like this, what else can you do.

♡♡♡

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