Taking Charge

I need a format, or an outline or anything it is you guys use.

_{Photo by Helena Lopes}

I've always been that guy who likes meeting new people and I thought I was a friendly soul who finds it really easy to make friends with anyone, but all of that mentality changed when my family moved to a different area. I soon realized that the only reason why I made friends easily at my former area was because that was where I grew up and I felt a lot more comfortable and confident there.

So starting a conversation with a random stranger didn't feel like a big deal because I was at my home, my self-esteem was always shooting up the roof and if there was anyone who should be shy, it should be the stranger that I'm trying to be friends with and not me.

Well all of that changed when we moved to this new environment. I suddenly became the stranger and at first I thought it was going to get better with time but that never happened. We stayed there for five years and while my siblings had a couple of friends here and there, I had none.

Anyways, I soon comforted myself with the fact that I was going to school soon so maybe making friends with anyone back at home wasn't that important afterall, but then I was forgetting one thing, the fact that I was not just moving to a new area, I was moving to an entirely new state to school. But luckily for me school was different.

Leave a bunch of young guys and ladies in a building all by themselves and they all will talking like best of friends before you know it. The school environment was friendly to me and within a week, I already made friends with some couple of guys through playing football. But you see, in as much as I'd like to give myself some credit for making friends that fast, I didn't really think I deserved it because I really didn't do anything extra like being the first to approach them and start a conversation, it just happened because of the environment we were in.

And truth be told, I don't want to settle for that. I want to be bold enough to move to a completely different place (not a school environment) where people don't generally just want to be your friend and still be able to make new friends or even just be able to talk to people even if we don't end up becoming good friends.

I want to be able to make friends when I want and not wait for when they want to be friends and be the one who says yes to them instead. I want to take charge, but the million dollar question I keep asking myself is how do I do that?