A Case of Loneliness

“After high school you realize you were only friends with some people because you saw them five times a week.”

All the obliged friends of high school.

How do you cure loneliness?

You come to discover in college that you have a vast amount of time. Time, not necessarily free time, but time.
You are no longer required to go to class for the same set schedule every single day of the week (give or take your senior releases). You no longer have the exact same lunch time as about 15 others that you know.
The remaining time from 4:00PM - 12:00AM that you had each day to say maybe have orchestra rehearsals (1-2hr), ballet class (1.5hr), work (2.5hr), and do homework (2hr), and then stay up till 2:00AM watching TV episodes or frantically worrying about your future.....was filled it up.
But nevertheless, you were guaranteed those 7 hours everyday to always see, converse, and associate with people you knew.

Now you have the awkward 1.5 hr between your one morning class and afternoon classes for a lunch (but who else is open then) and finishing that homework and then however much time for dinner you squeeze in between group meetings for two classes and your 'extracurricular organizations'.

There aren't set times for people. Aren't times to build relationships.

You have to make time for people. When you fail to do that, there is no one that will stand beside you.

There are only two things you can be: alone, or not alone.

Isn't that funny?

BUT under each of those two, you have: lonely, or not lonely.

But the more you tell yourself that you want to be by yourself, the more you isolate yourself by eating alone everyday while scrolling through news feed you've already seen twice before, the more you decide you need to catch up on homework (but really hole yourself up in your room while eating miscellaneous snacks while avoiding your studies), the more you decide you can't join things because your school work is already too much for you,

The more alone you'll be.
But not just that.
The more lonely you'll be.

To the undergraduate freshmen:
Start building your friendships early.
Maintain them, don't let them die. It's okay if you're the one who keeps asking.
Build bridges with the people you know. Build bridges to each others worlds. So then you can cross when you don't want to be alone. 
It's hard to build back bridges that have already crumbled.
It's hard to start bridges when the person on the other side has already gone to build somewhere else.

But that's the only way to cure loneliness.
To build bridges.


04. 12.2014