Dear Fresh Meat at the Lunch Bunch Picnic,

and anyone else who is going to be experiencing a little bit of change in the months to come.

My first day of freshman year I spent an hour trying to figure out what to wear because I'd never had to pick out my own wardrobe for school before. Instead of plaid and polos, I chose jeans and a sky blue V-neck that was too big for me. I woke up the next morning and was exhausted when I realized I had to do this again. Nothing that I chose ever seemed to be good enough.

I have woken up and put on clothes for 1,339 days since then. They fit better now.

My first class of freshman year was english, and our teacher asked us to call her by her first name. I can still remember the group of girls sitting in the back corner of the classroom, chit-chatting every morning. I sat in the front row, an observer of their friendships and intermingling pasts, wishing I still had my old friends with me. Every once in a while I got the courage to say something to them and interrupt their already put together lives, hoping maybe one day I will have friends like that again. The first friend I made in high school was that english teacher.

Four years ago, I never would have believed it, but I have friends like that again. Although, I'm still friends with my english teacher.

Change is scary and uncomfortable. It's like when you have the flu and you promise you would appreciate normal so much more, if only you could get back to it. I've never liked change very much, but I've learned there is no going back. I've gone back to my old school, visited with old teachers and old friends, and it's not the same as it once was because they have all changed too. Change comes, and when it did, I had to learn the hard way not to fight it but to let it take me.

A friend shared a great metaphor with me, and being a surfer, it involved the ocean. He said that there will always be instances when you wipe out and get thrashed around by a wave. Your first instinct is to swim and find air, but when you're underwater and being rolled around, you don't know which way is up. You could very easily be swimming down. What you're supposed to do is the exact opposite of what you instinctually want to do: you are supposed to go limp. You don't swim, you let the wave take you. Once the water has calmed you open your eyes and you follow the bubbles, because the bubbles float up.

I had to let the change take me, and had to trust that the calm would come and I would be able to breath once again. And it did. The loneliness of freshman year subsided and I eventually did make friends. But it took me a long time, and if I could go back to my fifteen year old self and tell her one thing, I would tell her this: don't forget to swim. The water calms, but you can't lay there limp forever, you still have to swim. You do. I was so scared to speak up or join a conversation. So scared to ask if someone wanted to hang out after school, or sit together at lunch. I thought people would think I was weird, or make fun of me, or that their lives were already so figured out they would have no room in it for me, so I wouldn't even try.

Friends aren't going to just fall out of the sky. That took me a long time to figure out. Yes, sometimes someone would come around that was brave enough to start a conversation with the scared little me, but I had to make the effort on my own. It was scary, but it was worth it.

The past week I was reminded of this while watching presentations in an AP Language class. A girl was talking about what it means to be human, and how important human interaction is. She mentioned Maslow's hierarchy of needs. At the base of that pyramid is the essentials, but the next two things (safety and love and belonging) require people. I feel safe because of my parents. I feel love and belonging because of my friends. Only through their help was I ever able to gain self-esteem and self-actualization. According to Maslow, and what I've found to be true in my life as well, is that we will always need other people, because those people help us find ourselves.

So yes, change is scary. Having to meet new people is still scary for me, and the idea of having to make new friends all over again next year while still staying in touch with my old ones is daunting. But I will start those conversations because I know it is worth it. I will miss my school, my teachers, and my dear friends. Ironically, many of my dear friends are those girls from my freshman english class I was so intimidated yet enthralled by. The relationships I've made the past four years have made me feel safe and loved and wanted. Through that, I slowly became more confident in who I am.

I have changed a lot since my freshman year, but it isn't anything crazy or bad like I was scared I would change into. I am fundamentally the same, the only difference is I am more fundamentally myself.

~Kat

P.S. Thank you, Mattie. I've been wanting to write this for a while now. You're writing matters and you matter so much to me. It's what wrote this piece. You will swim and you will breath.