For most of my life, I’ve been chasing the Missing Thing. I’ve never really managed to figure out what, exactly, that means. It’s always seemed to narrowly evade me. In fourth grade, I was confident it had something to do with dragons. In seventh grade, I thought it might involve Stanley Cups and Lululemon leggings. My freshman year I decided it was less about gaining something and more so just smiling enough, not wearing eyeliner.
The Missing Thing, in case you can’t tell, is just whatever it has been, my whole life, that has kept me from feeling fully involved in the communities I’m a part of. Whatever it is that leaves me on the outskirts of laughter. I have lasting friendships, people who love me, who want me around. I’ve been a part of friend groups, sports teams, clubs. I’ve been someone’s girlfriend, I’ve been someone’s best friend. Despite it all, for as long as I can remember, I’ve always had the subconscious thought that something about me is inherently unsettling.
And I’m sure there are some things I am missing, when it comes to being the perfect community member. It’s inevitable.
But the conclusion I’ve come to, over the past few years, is that that doesn’t matter. There is no magical key that’s going to fix my insecurity in friendships. The only solution is to keep searching for people who don’t care about those little things I’m missing. The solution is to approach everything in my life with confidence.
Think about it this way — how often do you genuinely dislike someone from the get go? How many times have you had the conscious thought that you don’t want to be friends with someone? My guess would be that it’s pretty infrequently. I can honestly say that the only times I’ve wanted not to be friends with someone, it’s been because I thought they wouldn’t want to be mine. And then, I tried actually talking to those people, the sorts who I thought, initially, were too cool for me. Too stylish, or funny, or well-liked.
No one’s ever really turned me away. Sure, sometimes we don’t vibe — you can’t be everyone’s sort of person. But that isn’t the same thing as there being something Missing in you. People just aren’t all for each other.
In the past two years, I’ve had the absolute pleasure of getting to meet so many people that I am lucky to call ‘my people’. Lots of them dress much better than me, lots of them are more talented, smarter, and more unique than me. But that doesn’t make me worse. It just makes me lucky to be surrounded by people who motivate me every single day to be better than I was before.
Those are the two most important things you can do for yourself. Letting go of the idea that you’re missing something, and allowing yourself the freedom to find your people. We’re our own worst enemies, most of the time. If you can get over the mental block of insecurities, you can do pretty much anything. Human beings were never designed to be intentionally cruel to each other. The vast majority of the time, it’s safe to assume other people want you around.
I can’t even begin to express how much my life has changed since I shifted my mindset to believing other people want me around. I make far more friends than I did when I was waiting for people to explicitly invite me to conversations. For the first time in my life, I can walk into rooms and find someone to talk to without fail. I laugh more, smile more. The work I create is far more inspired and more honest, because I have no reason to lie anymore. I don’t want to look cooler, or smarter. I don’t want to have a dictionary open next to me, and I no longer feel the need to wax poetic about my feelings. My writing has evolved to sound almost exactly like my speaking, and that’s how I want it.
My entire life has changed, and I still have all the same flaws and insecurities I did when I was trying to find the Missing Thing. I’m the same person I always was, just with a bit more confidence and an inability not to make stupid jokes and references all the time.
I wouldn’t have been able to be this version of myself without the people around me who’ve never let me feel stupid or silly for feeling the way I do. And I couldn’t be happier.
