friendships – The Orbital

At six, I pledged to a girl named Isabel that she’d be my best friend forever. She was blonde. I was brunette. Despite this, Isabel always insisted on playing Gabriella when we re-enacted scenes from our beloved High School Musical. I started to hate her a tiny bit. At fourteen, we fell out over boys. When I was nine, I told myself my best friend was a girl called Aoife. She was a bitch in the making, and something about that drew me in. She had a strength that I didn’t. But, like any blossoming bitch, she wanted to surround herself with other bitches (and despite my efforts, I was just a bit too off-the-wall to fit the bitch criteria). I haven’t spoken to Aoife since I was twelve, when her parents shipped her off to boarding school. When I was thirteen, my best friend w...

After previously studying for a year at another university, and then completing my first year at Royal Holloway - I have had to learn the hard way that you need to look out for yourself. By this I don’t mean force yourself to be horrible to people. I’m simply suggesting, the times when you really know you can’t afford to deal with other people’s problems, choose not to! Many of us will stress over things like course work and money troubles, but you don’t have to put more on your plate when it’s full with everyone else’s problems. Even now, I still feel awful when I’m deliberately not replying to a message from a friend who may be going through anything from a break up to an existential crisis. But the truth is, this then means I can get on with that essay that was due without rushing to d...

Tag: friendships

Issue Five Introduction: The Friend Game

It’s Okay to Be Selfish and Say No