I feel so alone

[ballerina99]

So this is not about sex... But I need to talk and idk where else to go. I'm 16, and people have always told me I'm mature for my age. They call me an "old soul" but I recently have been feeling like such a baby. A lot of my friends have started doing drugs and even more of them have started drinking. We are 16!!! I'm okay with them doing it and stuff, I'm just not comfortable doing it. I'm starting to feel like the only one of my friends who hasn't done any of this stuff at least once. I don't want to, and I'm not going to, but I feel like they are starting to see me as a baby and that makes me feel like crap. I just don't know what to do and I feel really really alone.

[Sam W]

Hi Ballerina,

It can definitely feel uncomfortable when your friend group starts to do things that you, for whatever reason, don't feel like participating in. When you say they're seeing you as a baby, are they doing or saying things that convey that? Or is it more of a situation where you're guessing at how they perceive you?

[ballerina99]

Well, most of them have not said anything, but my best friend has. She doesn't tell me anything about her life. Not anything, but she tells everyone else and since we have a lot of mutual friends I typically find out from other people. Also, she told a friend of our that I'm immature and that's why she doesn't tell me anything. But the problem with that is she's never given me a chance to be mature. She's never told me anything remotely controversial or upsetting so I've never gotten the chance to show her that I am mature.

[Sam W]

Thanks for clarifying. That does sound frustrating. It may be time to re-evaluate your relationship with your friend, as hard as that's going to be. Sometimes, as people grow up, they find that they don't get along the way they used to. And that can happen without anyone being at fault (although your friend sounds like she's being a tad harsh).

What would happen if you tried strengthening bonds with other friends, maybe those who you find you still have a lot in common with (and the ones who still act like they want to be friends with you)? Or reach out to people who are in that weird "almost friends but haven't quite made the jump" group?

[Johann7]

I'm really sorry to hear that you're feeling so isolated. I can offer some perspective from the other side of this kind of divide; it might help you see things in a different way that might be useful for reconciling, though I can't be sure your friends' experiences are anything like mine. I want to make it clear that I'm not saying any of this with the intent to blame you or to try to convince you to do things that make you uncomfortable, just to suggest ways that you might want to look at your own behavior to see if it's unintentionally contributing to your isolation.

To let you know where I'm coming from, I started smoking cigarettes at age 16, and this did cause problems in some of my friendships. I had friends who would make comments hostile to smoking or smokers, both not specifically directed at me and (rarely) specifically directed at me. I started hanging around those friends a lot less and telling them a lot less about my life, becasue having conversations turn into a shame-fest around my behavior wasn't any fun (and it did nothing to dissuade me from smoking - all it accomplished was making me not want to hang out with the people criticizing my behavior). For me, this wasn't about seeing my non-smoking friends as less mature or adult or cool or anything like that, it was all about my own insecurities and dislike of negative judgement. Ironically, in my first couple of years of high school, I had also pushed people away who started partying in ways I wasn't comfortable with, so I've been on both sides, but I didn't realize how that could have helped my understanding until later. For the closest friends, I managed to reconcile with them a few years later, once I was feeling less insecure and they were feeling less judgemental (and a lot of that judgement was driven by their own insecurities); for me, these splits mostly weren't permanent, but a temporary barrier.

You say you're okay with your friends using various drugs - do they know that? If you have previously made comments about how, say, drinking is stupid or dangerous, they might assume you still feel that way, especially since you're not doing it yourself (I'm not saying that you should start, just that for them, the fact that they ARE now drinking makes it clear that their opinions of the behavior have changed, where it might not be clear that yours has, if, indeed, it has). Even if you never did say anything negative about drinking etc. they might worry that anyone who isn't doing so themselves looks down on people who do - we get lots of cultural messages that say that teenagers shouldn't use any sorts of drugs, and they may assume that people who do not themselves do so will have internalized those messages and agree with them. Your comments suggest that you're not joining your friends at parties or whatever social spaces where they're drinking etc.; it's possible that the split you're noticing has less to do with whether you're e.g. drinking or not and more to do with you avoiding the social events that your friends find interesting now. Do you want to hang out with them in those situations? Do they know that you do/don't? If you don't, are there other interests that you still share that would lend themselves to spending time together?

You heard secondhand that your best friend said you were immature: that may or may not be the whole story, and it may or may not be the exact language she used, so it might help to bring the subject up with your friend to find out exactly what she did say. If that is accurate, that certainly wasn't a nice thing for your friend to say about you, and it's also possible she didn't really mean it. If she is worried about being negatively judged for drug use, she may also be worried about being judged for being worried about being judged, which could motivate her to lie about the reason she doesn't want to talk about that stuff with you. Of course, it is also possible that she has changed a lot and really doesn't think well of you any more. If that's the case, I'm really sorry, and Sam's suggestions are great for that. You have every right to stand up for yourself, to insist that people who are your friends not say mean things about you, and if your friends are not treating you well (and are unwilling to change their behavior when you tell them you don't like how they're treating you), you might need to change your social group a little.

I wish you well, ballerina99, and I hope either that you are able to patch things up with your existing friend group or that you are able to find a new group of people if you have drifted too far apart from your existing friends.

[Jacob]

Hey Johann,

I don't think ballerina99 has said anything about themselves being judgemental! I'd be really wary of wording things in ways that imply they are accountable for the situation in that way when they haven't asked about that.

However I do agree that communicating is always a super option.

Welcome to scarleteen though!

[capablehippie]

Hi Ballerina99,
I just wanted to say sorry that you feel alone, that's really a bummer. It's especially hard in high school when you don't always know who's doing what and why, and they might not understand why you choose not to. (I don't drink or do drugs either, and we're the same age). You can't really know without talking to your friends, but you could be their rock in a way. (For me at least) high school is a time of feeling in between who one is as a kid and more adultish or teenager-y things. Not really physical things, more like how one's values are changing. So, when I started swearing and kindofmaybesortofnotreallyexactly skipping classes, and my friends were like, "What? You're supposed to be the responsible one!" I realized that I had been helping them just by being who I was before. At least some of your friends might admire you for doing your own thing and being different. Some of your friends might secretly appreciate having someone like you who doesn't do drugs or drink. I don't always feel good when I do swear or something like that (I know that swearing isn't "bad," but it kind of is in proportion to my personality). Spending time with people who don't do the things I'm tempted to do, but don't really want to do, helps me be the person I want to be. Or they might not care that you don't partake. That said, if your friends are treating you unkindly or excluding you, or you feel like you have a lot less in common with them, then I agree with Sam that you might want to try and get to know new friends. Do you feel like it would make things worse to talk to your best friend about how she has been treating you differently lately? I think you're cool for doing what you want and not just doing what your friends are doing.

[ballerina99]

Thank you all for the input!! It's so helpful!! Just a couple things to add, I love my friends. Thy treat me really well and they are very sweet and caring people. Most of them have never done drugs, and have only had a small portion of alcohol. It's only a couple of my close friends that have been drunk and high. I'm not really worried so much about the ones who have only had a small portion of alcohol. I think they were sort of guilted into it and they are fairly similar to me in most aspects. It's really my best friend I'm worried about. I don't think she knows I'm okay with her doing that stuff, because she doesn't really know that I know she's done it, so we never talk about it. If that makes sense? I want to be there and be supportive, I just want her to feel comfortable talking to me. She's an incredible person and we care about each other a lot, so I'm fairly confident breaking off the friendship is not the right path. I know I should talk to her about her not telling me things, and I have tried, but she very clearly does not want to discuss it, so I drop it. If there's anything else I'm leaving out please ask I'll clarify.

Also, capablehippie, we sound very similar Thank you so much

And, johann7 thank you as well, those were some good points!