Meetup.com - a few months later...

Angie
May 31, 2017
3 min read

A few months ago, I downloaded the meetup app, and I started meeting strangers from the Internet...here is the update!

P.S. If you want to read the first article I wrote on this, read My First Meetup - meetup.com.

New connections

I am so so happy to say that ''Yes! I have made some amazing new friends!''.

This app has enabled me to win my battle against loneliness, boredom and social anxiety! I have now become ''that'' girl who is always on the look-out to meet new people and loves to socialise because after all, who would want to give up finding friends for life? I know they are out there, I just have to sift through the not-so-nice individuals who want anything but my platonic and organic friendship.

A social butterfly...

I wouldn't call myself a social butterfly...okay I would really, because I feel like I am evolving as a person, and growing as a human. I have been in my cocoon for too long and finally I am ready to ditch my larvae skin and turn into a vibrant, colourful butterfly. Of course every butterfly faces rejection, heartbreak, dishonesty and malice, and that's okay. We need to stop living in a fairytale world where we think we are perfect and our lives are perfect and have a bit of self-awareness. Not everyone is nice, and not everyone will like us, but it's important to remember that someone will. Someone will get our humour, someone will like the same things as us and someone will want to be our friend. We are not the victims, we are blessed with the opportunity to have the capacity to connect with another human. If you're reading this and think, ''no, that's not me'', you're wrong. If you can read, you can talk*, if you can talk, you can connect, if you can connect you can belong and if you belong, you can love... truly, deeply and with no apologies.

*or communicate

New confidence

Ever since going to those meet-ups, and meeting new faces and continuing to build relationships with the familiar faces, I have gained an illuminating confidence. Something about overcoming your own fears has given me a spark that I knew I had within me, but it just took a few acts of courage for it to surface to the top. A strong and confident person is not someone who has no fear or someone who doesn't feel their fears - those people are weak. A strong person is someone who is able to feel the fear, and still pursue their dreams, with the realistic thought that ''yes, sometimes the fear will win, but sometimes I will manage to overcome it''.

Therapy has been a big help in all this - I am researching more and more into psychology - behaviours, thoughts, emotions. It's so interesting, it's making me reconsider my carreer choices!

Who am I?

I don't recognise myself in the mirror sometimes. Who is this girl, and where is her misery, brokenness and lack of spark?

I am all the bad things I've mentioned in this article, but I am also all the good things too. Self-acceptance isn't about getting rid of the bad parts of you, it's about accepting that it's okay to have those feelings of inadequacy, failure and rejection. It's about not letting those define us. We are all good and we are all bad. We all have evil inside of us trying to get out, and when it does, we think we're automatically a bad person. No.

We are simply human. Complex, beautiful, a little bit broken on the inside but still functioning humans.