I was needy for friendships for the longest time. I often joke about how I had no friends between 15 and 25, but it is true. My family moved to England in 2008; slowly, my social life became non-existent.
Speaking with my mother lately, she reminded me of how prior to relocating, I grew up within a community of family friends and friends. There were always older family friends and sometimes family available to pick me up for one event or the other when I was much younger.
As an early to mid-teenager with a bunch of friends from school, life was fun. "Ibukun, you were always going from place to place, you never really sat still." While she does enjoy the occasional event, my mother enjoys staying at home, so I learnt to strike a balance between my outgoing nature and sitting still. It was clear that I had no business hanging out if I had not fully taken care of my personal business, whether it was personal care, chores, school work or any other responsibilities expected of me - this provided boundaries that kept me in line and still keep me in line.
Getting ready to be picked up for an event :)
I learnt how to spend quality time with myself as much as I learnt to spend quality time with others while in the midst of these people who made up my world; people who I thought just happened to be there. Now that I'm much older, I understand that the loving community that kept me safe and blissfully unaware of life's cruelties early in life was God-orchestrated, and the bubble that cushioned me had been carefully curated by my parents (my mother especially).
Outside of this Ife bubble, I never really struggled to make friends, I remember spending a couple of summer weeks at French Village in Badagry and being friends with all these kids from all over Nigeria, one year it was girls from Queens College and girls from Olabisi Onabanjo University International School. Another year, it was girls from Zamani College. And even outside of these, I made lots of friends in my French classes. Spending summers with my cousins and family friends outside Ife meant that I got to hang out with them and their own friends too. It was never a struggle. People often liked me and wanted me around them, and I liked being around people too.
J.S.S. 3 Extension
There is something about presence that feeds my soul. Being around a person or a group of people that like me like I like them and want me around like I want them around infuses energy into my soul. Considering The Four Temperaments, I am sanguine-choleric, and sanguines generally are extroverted and crave company. My early childhood to mid-teenage life served me well in this regard, I never wanted for companionship. I depended on the HolySpirit to guide me in making good choices and choosing good friends, I also had my strict mother to rein things in when my boundaries were slack or when I would put people before myself in unhealthy ways (to be honest, I never really got this, it took some not so nice experiences down the line to put things into perspective for me). There was a good balance... I had a good balance.
This balance would soon be thrown into disorder in a way I never imagined. I never in my wildest dreams thought that I would never be around people or friends. Friends made life fun and exciting, I always had them so I never thought a time would come when I would not have them. I did not even realise how much my community supported me until they were no longer there. The spaces of love, emotional support, tenderness, gentleness, kindness, care and acceptance that they filled were all of a sudden empty, and the longer I was away from them without any suitable replacement, the more hollow it got. It felt like a life-giving, blood-supplying vein was cut off and I was on life support. What is life without friends? What is life without true community? My village of kind and loving, ready to help and guide people of a diverse age demographic was nowhere to be found.
I know there is nothing embarrassing about wanting friends but it was an awkward and somewhat embarrassing place to be - to crave friendships yet not have any friends. I would see people with friends and wish I was them. I would meet people randomly and if I liked them, I would pray that we would be friends, but for some reason, nothing really clicked. I was upset with myself a lot. Why did I want friends so much? No one really cared about being friends with me here, plus I sometimes questioned the way friendship was done here. From church to sixth-form, I met a good chunk of people but they were merely acquaintances... they defined friendship differently from how I defined friendship. Girls bonded over the fact that they did not like their bodies, moaning over one thing or the other. I liked myself, liked my body, so I did not see any need to moan.
Still new in England - I had only just been allowed to relax my hair.
I remember the day I interrupted one of the moaning sessions in the girls' bathroom of the teens' church I attended - there was a fashion parade and we were all trying to change into our outfits for the event. Girls with big boobs wished they had small boobs. Small boob girls wished they had big boobs, and the comments were not whimsical, they were complaints from a place of deep dissatisfaction. There was always something to complain about - sometimes they did not like their eyes, other times, it was their hair. I was fed up and must have muttered something along the lines of “We’re all beautiful the way we are." The awkward silence and eye rolls that followed acknowledged that I was never going to fully assimilate.
It was hard. This environment where identity, race and body consciousness were an extremely big deal, especially in the lives of teenage girls, was totally different from the carefree, non-self-conscious life I had come from. I decided I was fine on my own, no need to make friends. I threw myself into activities I was interested in to keep me busy. I joined the hip-hop dance team at church, I sang in the choir thus attended all three Sunday services, after which I attended Hillsong's 6p.m. service at the Dominion, I signed up to serve and volunteer whenever and wherever. In sixth-form, I joined the debate team, I helped out at home-work club and reading club, and I participated in school choir rehearsals. I signed up for anything I was interested in, so long as it kept me busy while prepping for my A-Levels. Through my activities, I was able to meet loads of people and develop surface-level friendships that never needed to be deep. Every now and again, I would meet someone and think we could be close friends, but none of those surface friendships lasted. Once I moved on from the activity that brought us together, the friendship was over.
By the time I moved to university, I had somewhat internalised the belief that it was highly unlikely that I would make friends in England. Also, at the time, I did not like it much here. I planned that after university, I would move somewhere else... maybe back to Nig. I was going to continue to focus on my school work, get involved in activities I liked and just push through. So when a couple of people showed interest in being friends at university, I was surprised. I opened up but soon regretted it. Even the activities, I was involved in at university, that involved surface-level acquaintanceship (the Christian ones included) brought along with them one form of pain or strife or the other. Let's just say that I was exposed to another side of life and I learnt a lot.
At a house party at uni
While my overload of activities kept me afloat, the hollowness I felt from a lack of community remained on the inside of me and got worse. My course at university was demanding enough on its own, so I pulled out of the activities I had signed up for and barely went anywhere outside of classes and the library. Now all this extroverted energy I had collapsed on the inside of me as I struggled through depression, social anxiety, insecurity, loneliness, fear of failure and fear of rejection. It was dark. It was a very dark period and it would take me yearrrs by the grace of God and the help of the HolySpirit to come out of all these.
Homelife was good and brought stability. My parents and siblings, like myself, were trying to navigate this new terrain. We had one another but even our relationships with one another would go through new phases amidst these changes, and be redefined. I would say my younger sister and I had a good friendship back in Nigeria - our lives were intertwined in a good way. We went everywhere together and did everything together, she had her own friends while I had mine, yet we had a closeness. This closeness, unfortunately, fizzled out as I withdrew into my world to figure things out as life got more difficult for me - she thought I was ignoring her. We are slowly working on things now. Fingers crossed for the future.
My sister and I - I think we were ages 5 and 8 here.
People do not often talk about how a lack of friendships and community can negatively impact emotional growth, social growth and mental health, especially as a young person. It is through relating with people that we grow our social skills, and experience life phases together through which we develop emotional intelligence and mental stamina. I believe I was stuck at age 15 for a veryyy long time. While I did the work to make sure that I was growing spiritually and in my education, my lack of healthy friendships/community had created gaps in my life experiences and consequently my emotional and mental life. It took some serious growing pains to catch up! And sometimes, I still think I am catching up.
It is not enough to be healthy in spirit, soul and body or to strive to be healthy people, we also need healthy environments where we feel safe, where we can be ourselves, where no one is making passive-aggressive comments about us, where we are around other healthy people or at least people who want to be healthy too. We need healthy environments to express ourselves. I believe it took a while for me to find a healthy environment where I could freely express myself in England. Around age 24/25, I walked into a Sisterhood Connect Group that was healthy and safe. After about two years, the connect group closed as the majority of the 10ish girls in the group got dispersed across the world, as life, marriage, work etc. reorganised our lives.
Again, I was in search of a healthy community. I had already had my fair share of toxic environments (even church ones), so I knew what to look out for, I was also able to discern God's leading better. I finally found another Sisterhood community which I am still a part of today. The girls are lovely - we all grow and learn together. It is amazing how when you are in the right community, it seems so simple and not a big deal. It's only when we are out of the loop and need help that we realise how disastrous a lack of community or a wrong/toxic community can be to our lives (especially when it is long-term), hence why we should be on the lookout to be welcoming to people who are new and lonely and in need of friendship and community. Having said that, there are mean people out there; the last thing anyone needs is to open the door to a wicked person, so let the HolySpirit lead you. Take your time to vet and do not do anything you are not comfortable with. Prayers and time will often reveal people's intentions.
Recently, I was in Nigeria for my cousin, Miju's wedding - It was so much fun and it was the first time I was a bridesmaid in my adult life. I had the opportunity to meet up with friends I had made in Primary 2, Primary 3 and J.S.S. 3 respectively, who I had not seen (for the most part) in yearss. We all grew up in Ile-Ife together and between us attended the same four primary and secondary schools (some of us switched at certain points). It was so natural and freeing. After our discussion, I could not help but marvel at how grounded and sound they all are. Spiritually, emotionally, career-wise, they are on their A-Game and doing their best to be the best they can be. This was my normal. Well-rounded, loving and kind people. Why was it so hard for me to find circles like this between 15 and 25 in England?
Bridesmaid Duties
“Ibukun, you are so bubbly and friendly. I cannot imagine you depressed.” One of them blurted out. All I could mutter was “Ah!” with an ‘I can‘t explain it, and I don‘t think you’ll get it’ face. Even these girls who now live in Lagos had not met up with one another. It took me being in town to bring them back in connection with one another, as two of them complained about not having friends in Lagos. Then I said “If I were based in Nigeria, I would not find it hard to have friends at all” One of them said “… but you have always been friendly with people. I find it hard to make new friends.”
My Ile-Ife friends - old friends are gold.
As much as the environment in which we find ourselves matters, personality also plays a part. I have always had a charismatic, friendly persona, but the environment in England for some reason had not really served me well (by the way, I know it is different for some people. There are people for whom England has been perfect, friendship-wise). It reminds me of a short trip I took to Australia in 2018, where within a week, I had made up to 10 friends… some of whom I still keep in touch with virtually.
I have had to reach a place on the inside of me where whether or not I have the friendships and/or the community I want, I am fine. I asked God to fill the hollowness I felt on the inside of me - the spaces that were once filled with love and acceptance that longed to be filled again. Psalm 23:5 says:
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
I asked God to fill that hollow place and cause it to run over, and He did. Little by little, step by step, He healed me and He filled that space. I asked God to be my best friend. I was tired of trying to find people to fill that space. Gone are the days when I would see a group of girls in seemingly healthy, well-rounded friendships, and feel a twinge of envy. I'm happy for them, and I am happy for me too. It also feels good to not be on the active look out for new friends, plus when my expectation of wanting to be friends with a person falls through, it does not hurt any longer - it just is what it is.
My connect group remains a healthy source of community and friendships for me - the girls are lovely and kind. I have also recently met a couple of wonderful people, so there is potential to develop long-term healthy communities and friendships in England - I am looking forward to seeing how these connections evolve.
I still pursue my interests, no longer to cover up a void, but from a more meaningful place. I'm currently learning to knit, plus I am interested in gardening. I plan and hope that in the next year I have a more structured life that allows me to be consistent with pilates and ballroom dancing (fingers crossed!).
Thank you for reading all the way to the end. Wow. I'm grateful. I hope you have been encouraged :) I pray that you develop a true friendship with God, and wish you healthy friendships and communities with fellow humans who are just perfect for you!
Toodles
