Sometimes, I feel as if I deserve the negative treatment I am receiving from these so called “friends.” I feel as if there is no hope to find great friends after I moved away from my best friend.

This is not the first time I have moved, nor the second, but the eighth. I am used to constantly leaving friends and trying to build a new life for myself. I would not consider myself an extrovert by any means, except that I have taught myself how to talk to people. But the last move has been the hardest.

I moved over COVID-19, making difficult to create friendships over zoom. I spent a year, alone and isolated, in my bedroom. When I went to my first day of in-person classes, a girl came up to me and introduced herself, recognizing that I was new.

From there bloomed a wonderful friendship of drawing silly characters and different worlds in sketchbooks on the end of my bed, watching anime, baking jam cookies, trying different variations of Ramen, chowing down on croissants, swimming in her backyard pool, and laughing as we walked home together.

About a year and a half later, we still text and occasionally call, but it’s not the same. It was nice to have my closest friend live only a few doors down from my house.

Where I live now, there is too much drama. I often have a hard time trusting that a few of these new kids want to be around me because I am me. I lost a lot of confidence because I felt different from everyone else, most who had lived here their entire lives. It felt even harder than the isolation in my room.

When a few people would ask who my closest friend was, I always thought, _she lives in a different state. _I felt alone as I watched many groups of good friends laugh at a joke together. I began to fall into a dark hole of sadness, fearing that I would never be able to make a true friend again. I felt like giving up.

But just as things got the darkest, my best friend texted me a simple, “Hey, how are you?”

I realized that I would never be able to have a friend just like her, but I could keep trying to be the amazing friend she was to me.

Almost a year later, I have found a few good friends, but they don’t replace the friend in my corner. We text almost every week and she continues to inspire me to be a better friend.