Growing on my own

I was heading back home after spending months abroad. Naturally, I was extremely excited. Summer back in India meant a few things: sunblock, home-cooked food and spending time with my high school friends. A lot of time with them.

It had been a while since we spent countless hours sprawled on one of our couches gossiping about our current Bollywood crush and recounting embarrassing stories that we won’t let each other forget. It was as if no time had passed and we still saw each other five days a week, rather than twice a year.

Alas, the passage of time, or the lack thereof, is a double-edged sword. While I was grateful that I could use the same lame jokes to crack my friends up and hug them tightly for forgiveness, I also noticed that the positive changes that college had instilled in me were slowly slipping away.

College has definitely made me more open to other perspectives, even if I vehemently disagreed with them — trust me, I had a fruitful and tolerant conversation about abortion with a religious friend. Though it wasn’t a piece of cake, I had quit the constant rat race to prove that I was always right, and I was proud of myself for doing that.

However, I noticed that a few weeks into summer, I was unconsciously regressing into the rigid and always trying-to-prove-her-point version of myself. Whether it was petty arguments about our group’s vacation to the coast or casual intellectual conversations, I had to win it all. It took me a while to realize that summer didn’t only mean spending time with old friends, it meant spending time with old Edhita too.

For a few days, I wondered if spending time with some of my high school friends was the reason I had lapsed into this immature 17-year-old again. This idea led me to wrongly believe that I had outgrown some of my friends, and that perhaps my college friends were the ones who brought out the “real me.”

Like everything else in my life, it wasn’t that simple. Cut to the present, I am back on campus for my sophomore year and hanging out with the friends I made last year. I now realize that they don’t necessarily bring out the best in me, either.

While I felt secure in my high school friendships and knew that they would always have my back, I haven’t developed that same level of security and comfort with all of my college friends. Moreover, whenever I thought about college over the summer, I completely blocked out the FOMO I sometimes felt when my friends went to parties — activities that I didn’t always enjoy but still said “yes” to because I thought I needed to. I forgot about the times my laughter was a bit forced or I didn’t speak my mind because I wasn’t sure how others would react to it. So, at college, I am the Edhita who is insecure about her friendships; someone who constantly second-and-third-guesses the friends she has, despite them not having done anything to warrant these thoughts.

As I write this piece today and think about my experiences with high school and college friends alike, I truly believe that it isn’t about which set of friends brings out the best version of me. After all, how can I attribute my entire identity to the people I hang out with?

Don’t get me wrong, the people you spend time with do influence you and your behavior. But each of us has the power to decide to what extent they influence us. I have grown and evolved so much in the past few months, and it’s only natural that I will continue to do so — as will my friends. I realize now that it’s a bit unreasonable to expect my friend group to always be the perfect fit for me and my ever-changing identity, especially in college.

Looking forward, I am so excited to see who “Edhita” will become as I grow through my college experiences and strive to become a better version of myself. In the end, I, along with everyone else, am on this journey alone. While friends are a pivotal support system, they shouldn’t define my identity and be the sole reason behind me becoming a better version of myself. Instead, it’s important that they make me feel comfortable enough to be whatever version of myself I want to be, warts and all.

Edhita Singhal is a sophomore from India writing about her experiences as an international student in her column, “Foreign Footprints,” which runs every other Tuesday.