Today (as of starting this piece) would have been my first day back at undergraduate classes. However, I just graduated last semester (yippie!) and the isolation of being the first one done and alone at home is beginning to dawn on me. While my life adventure is merely beginning, with a cheery hello to graduate school this fall, I can’t help the loathsome feelings sweeping in with this spring. Similar to the emptiness of a recent break-up, having free time from hours prior spent studying is an odd isolation. I’ve spent many of my days testing out old hobbies and interests, trying to find the ones that bring the most joy. From binging as my dad calls “desperate sex wives” (desperate housewives and sex and the city), to crocheting more items then there is room for in my house, I still feel a gap of unsatisfaction that hobbies cannot resolve.

Communities are something so unique yet rigidly uprooted in the US. When you’ve found one you truly feel comfortable and recognized in it’s difficult to say goodbye. I didn’t cry much when high school had ended, same with college. Yet I shed many tears over graduating 8th grade. Perhaps it was due to being my first experience of saving goodbye to a community I had known. Though a larger part is that I had spent 8 years growing up at the tiny school and being apart of something more then myself. On just as intimate of a level, I felt grief pour from my body when I had to say goodbye to my small sorority. I’ve rigidly believed that covid was the metal baseball bat that beat to death many public group meetings and environments. The urge to befriend the stranger next to me at the coffee shop is strong, but not nearly as strong as the impending social anxiety from blossoming adulthood. It feels unnatural to reach out to people in public settings unless with the notion set to be social. Which, again, is something I blame a pandemic for wiping the existence of.

I’ve poked and prodded at online communities, though the bleeps of rapid discord notifications would exhaust me to skim, while finding individuals to chat with at an activity never would. Sure, I could just be an extrovert but even some of my more introverted friends I’ve discussed this feeling of with. The yearning to be apart of a community, a humanistic trait that even my poor little sim will scowl and stomp her virtual feet if she doesn’t get enough of it.

As we grow more comfortable in our individual lives, I can’t help but wonder if this is a common experience that’s a trait of “growing up”. My father would always quip he has zero friends, yet still throws a birthday party every year that leaves us with several new packs of booze which states otherwise. My mom still speaks to other mothers from the group she was in when I was a newborn, and I still turn to my middle school friends for relationship advice. Sometimes I wonder, if we miss old communities so much we keep a connection with them despite our growing differences just to have a piece of it still following us.

Most of the recent media I’ve been consuming (hello once more to “desperate sex wives”) are based around that too. From Wisteria Lane, to Hawkins Indiana, there’s always a clique with a reason. Unfortunately, this rarely comes about in our reality, which perhaps is why watching these bonds unfold on tv, bring so many people enough satisfaction.

Rather then satisfaction, it leaves me still yearning. Oh how I wish I could go out to a bar and instead of old men with odd smiles that offer a drink, I’d rather meet another woman who offers me a swipe of her lipstick. During this time, I’ve begun going to the gym more frequently, yet it only makes me wistfully think of when I would bump into friends (or even an enemy) at the small on at my college.

While it could be easy to write off this feeling and to go “stop bitching and join a book club”, I have a fear of being the only one in my 20’s amongst a crowd that already settled in themselves. Not much is targeted for my age group, perhaps it’s due to relationships from school still being fresh, but I truly believe people convince themselves it’s easier to swipe through tiktok comments then to connect on the outside. This senile sentiment I hold is from accepting too many goodbyes and waiting for new hello’s. I truly hope I am proven wrong and can come back as I do every few months to post gleefully about some organization I’ve joined. As of now, I’ll take my coffee for one and wait for the glow in my heart at new friends to shine once more.