What does that title mean to you? People who build you up, make you a better version of yourself, can give you a sense of belonging, someone who makes you laugh at any given time of the day, or just someone you use to build yourself up? High school is a hard time for anyone to find true friends. People are insecure and find those who are confident and secure in themselves and try to take what they have. A lot of us treat life like a competition, and it shouldn’t be like that. We’re constantly trying to have everything that’s just better than everyone else, we want to be known and wanted by people. I’m going to tell you one thing that I’m lucky to have already figured out, high school is four short years of your life, so don’t waste it on trying to be “that girl.”  

Let’s talk experiences, some of us have had a lot of them, others of us are just starting to make them. How do you want your experiences to affect you. Do you want to love it all, or feel haunted by them? Friends can give you a lot of those memories.

I think some of us still are fighting for that “high school experience.” What is that exactly? Parties, relationships, school dances, or just lots and lots of friends? Sometimes those friends lead to stories that you’ll tell your kids. You’ll remember your best friends, and your worst ones. Remember the first time you had a toxic friend, it led to an argument with not only them but the whole friend group, right? You felt belittled, ignored, used, and just not yourself. You couldn’t be who you wanted to be with them. Maybe it felt like a one way friendship, they only came to you when they wanted to feel better about themselves. They used you again and again until you finally felt just done with it all. I think some of us are still getting used by someone and you just don’t realize it yet.  

I wanted to hear from girls our age, girls who were experiencing everything just as we were. The first person I interviewed was a freshman, Alyssa Foote. We talked a lot about what to look for in a good friend, and how you know if they’re well to keep for after high school. “When looking for a good friend I look for qualities like trustworthiness, honesty, loyalty, and kindness. I feel like these are important qualities to look for in a friend because all of them give some sense of support in the friendship, and a true friend will always support you.” You’ll know when a friend supports you because after you’ve spent time with them you feel better about yourself. Everything is better, and you don’t feel bad about anything. Something Alyssa wants people to know about making friends in high school is “…to make friends with people who bring you up rather than bring you down, a friend shouldn’t make you angry or sad often, a friend is supposed to be someone who supports you and makes you happy. If that isn’t happening, then you should either try to work on the friendship or find other people who actually make you happy.” 

The next girl I decided to interview was a sophomore, Ava Mae Guthrie. When asked if she was still friends with any of her childhood friends, she had told me they still were. Something that helped them to stay together for so long was “Girl scouts, sports, and our parents were really good friends.” Another thing I had picked up was that they had a lot of mutual interests, they could relate to things about each other. Ava Mae told me about how she had one main best friend. This was the friend that she could go to for anything. I asked about that one friend and if she would rather have just one friend like her, or multiple good friends, “That’s a hard question! It depends on who it would be, but probably one best best-friend.” 

Aubrey Klarman is a junior, and she gave a lot of wise words for girls struggling with friendships. She knew that the friends she had were special because “I didn’t get stressed around them! I have anxiety and though I am very extroverted and will quite literally have a conversation with anyone, I still get nervous committing to friendships through my anxiety. The friends I have now not only support me, but help me through my moments with anxiety.” She then branched out to the idea of how the special friends you have aren’t just a one stop kind of thing, “True friends are the ones that support you and stick by you.” You learn a lot through different friendships, you’re good and bad ones, long and short ones, or just people you talk to at school. “Experiences and parts of life can be temporary; friendships can be temporary too. Somebody may be your best friend at one point and someone you just wave to in the hallway the next. This is okay! Not everyone is meant for every walk of life. It may hurt, but it hurts because it matters.” Friendships matter, experiences matter, lessons matter. The people that you fill your life with help you to realize what you need to. “Live in your moment! Make sure the people you let in fill your life with happiness. If they’re not meant for you, simply let them go and that’s okay!” 

The last person I talked to is  a senior, Ellie Ford. When asked if she had different friends to go to for different things she told me, “I think it’s really important to have people that you can reach out to suit your specific needs because you are like your only self. There’s nobody that’s going to be exactly like you. So, you have all your different needs, and having a diverse friend group and community of people that suit those needs for you creates a much larger support system that’ll benefit you more in the future.” Tying into that discussion we started to talk about her own experiences. Each different friend has given her different memories and taught her different lessons. “I wouldn’t change my experiences even if they’re really hard experiences or things that have hurt me or I’ve done to hurt others by accident. I think it’s really important to grow and learn from different things because if everything’s all happy and amazing all the time, you wouldn’t learn anything.” 

That was a lot, wasn’t it? Everyone had a different story but a lot of us may be going through the same thing. What’s a true friend to you? Do you want someone who can make you laugh, give you a hug when you feel like crying, talk to you about life, have an amazing time, or just to sit with when you need silence and peace in your life? Well, something that someone very close to me explained was that “You’ll find the friends that fill your cup. It might not be for awhile but you will know who to go to when you need them, and you’ll do the same for them.”

Don’t just settle for people when you know you deserve something better, something fuller. Go for it, find the ones that make you feel everything. You could be lucky enough to find someone that gives you everything, or just as lucky to find multiple people in your life that each can give you something different. Don’t worry, you’ll find them. We’ve got our whole life ahead of us, we follow the path given to us and along the way different people will be there to teach us a different something . So, I guess what I want everyone to know is that you deserve the friends that fill your cup not just halfway, but so it overflows.