Is it just me? It can’t be.

Last weekend, two of my dear friends hosted a celebration of the life they created together in NYC ahead of their move to a different country. They invited their numerous circles of friends that they had fostered deep friendships with over the last several years to one last party (for now!). It was beautiful. Throughout the night, I found myself really admiring how my friends had kept the door open for new friendships and I reflected on just how open my heart and mind is to do the same.

As someone who lives in an extremely diverse metropolis at a time where the world is emerging from the pandemic haze, I’ve started to take stock of when I stopped being more open to making more friends. After mulling over it for some time, and especially this week, I’m noticing that my brain is revolving around the same, fairly ridiculous concerns: In making new friends and joining new communities, would I be able to give the same amount of love to my existing friendships? Yes. Is it selfish to pursue and be open to more connections? No. Is there such a thing as having enough friends? Don’t know, but also a pointless question. As someone with a truly finite amount of social energy, is it worth the bet on spending time with someone new? There are going to be hits and misses, and that’s just the way it is. And what has come up for me as the most unexpected, inner-most, and stomach-churning question is: why do I feel unworthy when I talk to new people? Oy.

As someone who didn’t always have a core group of friends, friendship is extremely precious to me. Growing up, trusting in a friendship was really difficult. Having grown up small, predominantly white neighborhood that was best defined as a fairly affluent town outside of Atlantic City, I felt like an outsider. Even if we went to K-12 together, I didn’t feel like anyone actually knew me. At some point, I started to notice that the small number of friendships I did have began to change and peel off at various points in high school. It was easier to convince myself that I was too busy with extracurriculars and homework to hang out with people than it was to ruminate on whether that was actually true or not. It was too hard to feel the constant rejection. I turned to TV, books, and even puzzles to attempt to minimize the blackhole of my loneliness. The years of longing had turned into a growing sense of being intrinsically unworthy of finding even just one community.

Luckily college came and I got to escape my hometown. Since I was starting from zero, in a sense, I was open to any new experience. After finding a wonderful group of friends in college and meeting my husband shortly thereafter, I do feel like my social cup is remarkably full even a decade later. I’m no longer starting at zero. Now that I actually have deep friendships, I’m nervous about doing something that puts them at risk; I find myself feeling selfish to even being curious about who else might be out there. What’s more is that in recent years, I started to jokingly say ‘no new friends,’ but I think that I’ve unexpectedly taken that to heart.

In the rare moments where I give myself a pep talk to walk up to possibility, I get in my head. A part of me firmly whispers that I am a nobody to this new person, who must have a very full life and who couldn’t possibly be actually interested in what I was talking about or doing. I have found myself once again unworthy or uninteresting to the people that I would love to know more about.

Taken during the first Q&A

I never really thought about how ill-equipped I feel in meeting new people until I went to Google’s Image Equity Fellowship event a couple of months ago. The exhibition was showing the work of 20 selected photographers who were chosen to create works that explored their untold community stories. The photographers were, needless to say, all supremely talented. When I heard about the gallery, I thought I would simply and privately walk through the works with my husband, discuss what we thought just between the two of us, and leave - probably all within a couple of hours. Instead, I was surprised to learn that the entire day was filled with Q&As and all of the photographers were actually in attendance.

An example of what I would have shown Emanuel, if I had my wits about me.

Taken on my Rollei 35, I think Tri-X b&w film.

At the end of the first Q&A session, I sensed someone slightly behind me and slowly turned around only to be surprised that it was Emanuel Hahn, a Korean American photographer I have followed and admired for years. I shouldn’t have been that surprised, he was one of the selected photographers and I only knew about the exhibition through his Instagram. For a second, I considered not saying hi but in the next, I mustered up the courage to introduce myself and share my appreciation for his work. He was incredibly nice and after he mentioned that he was going to be participating in the next Q&A session, I saw him take a glance at the simple point-and-shoot film camera slung on my shoulder. It was then that he asked if I was a photographer, too. I immediately explained that I was simply a hobbyist, which I thought would be the kiss of death in the conversation. Instead, he asked me another unexpected follow-up question, and it was that moment where I started to feel unworthy of the attention. As I stumbled on a few sentences in response, someone else introduced themselves to Emanuel. After judging the situation for just a couple of seconds, I instinctively used that interruption as my exit. I told him that it was really nice to meet him and that I’d be sure to stick around for his Q&A (which I did). Afterwards I felt a mix of being proud of myself but also bummed that I felt so out of practice.

I think that feeling unworthy of being in a conversation with someone new, even I’m truly happy to meet them, is personally really debilitating. What has held me back from talking with people who are masters in what they do is a lack of confidence and a dash of imposter syndrome; is there space for a hobbyist like me and if so, do I even know what I’m talking about? For people that I think are just really cool, will I be rejected? Why would anyone want to get to know me?

If I strip away all of the unproductive, but real, questions that I just outlined above, I can see the forest through the trees. I have some understanding that feeling unworthy of anything is isolationist by nature. If I just push past the isolation, a whole world literally opens up. I know what true despair for community feels like, and I’ve been blessed to have found my chosen community since; it is also allowed to morph and evolve over time. I also want to shed the sense that just because someone is already excelling at something doesn’t mean that it’s off the table for me if I have a genuine interest in it, too. There is actually no reason why the collective “we” cannot grow and celebrate together. It turns out I know these things, they’re just really hard to do.

In putting this out there, in my corner of the internet, I’m confronting a mental barrier I’ve placed for myself. I feel quite vulnerable sharing this publicly, but by externalizing it, it’s easier for me to see the holes in the narrative I have weaved for myself. I know that I’m the only one holding myself back.

As I attempt to wrap this up while hoping that I’m making any kind of sense, I think it’s worth noting an interesting coincidence I noticed since I started to write this musing. In just the past few of days at least four very different creators on different platforms, all of whom I’ve followed for some time, have published content on the struggle of being open to and making new adult friendships. Sure, it could be the various algorithms. However, I think that it’s possible that now that life feels more normal, many of us are feeling a shared curiosity of meeting new people. Logically, it can’t just be me, and I’m comforted by that.