I always grew up with the sense that I had to please others, and that part of my responsibility as a person was to be nice to other people and forge loving friendships. To be nice to people instead of telling them, “no.” What I didn’t learn until I got into the real world was that it’s okay to say “no” to an outing if you’re tired, or that it’s okay to take a day to yourself and disconnect and not respond to any messages. If your friends get mad at you for not going out because you’re tired or for not responding to their message, then they’re not really your friends. Your friends are people who will support and love you unconditionally.

Recently, one of my close friends didn’t reply to a message I sent for a couple days, but when he did respond, he included, “Sorry for the late response, I got caught up with some stuff.” I simply responded, “You don’t need to apologize for being an adult,” and continued our previous topic. It wasn’t until I graduated from undergrad that I understood that someone not responding immediately was not a personal attack on me; that it meant they don’t care about me enough to respond right away or that they don’t want to talk to me. I only learned this because I started doing it myself. I started taking longer to respond to messages and planning things because I just got busy with a full time job and post-graduate studies. The saying, “You have less friends when you grow up,” is true because people just get busy as they start adulting and have less time to make plans and just eventually stop communicating. That’s what makes the friendships that do survive through the years much more special. It’s ironic because most of my strongest friendships are friends I’ve made online through games and friends I barely see once a year, but we are still always there for each other and support each other unconditionally. I have a good handful of friendships that have lasted more than ten years like this.

I went through a lot of guilt trips when if I said no to someone, it would be followed with, “Why don’t you like/love me?” or “I guess we’re not friends then,” and other unsupportive sayings. After I said “no” a couple times for various reasons, I eventually stopped getting invited to things because people were just tired of me rejecting their invites and that just led to a negative feedback cycle. Being young means there’s a lot of emotional, petty behavior.

Now, I don’t get offended if a message I send never gets responded to. I understand that people get busy or stop using social media. It doesn’t mean I stop being friends with the person or that they like/love me less. It just means I have to try to catch them at a better time or make more attempts to catch up with the person. Life happens. You never know what’s going on in a person’s life all the time. You never know what their mental status is like, whether they’re responsive to messages at the moment, whether they’re dealing with family troubles or relationship problems that you won’t be able to help with anyways. I know for me, if I don’t respond to a message immediately, I almost never respond because I just forget about it. That doesn’t mean the message doesn’t mean anything, it just means I couldn’t respond at the moment and just forgot because other things occupied that headspace. I have a pretty bad habit of opening messages during work, getting caught up at work, and then forgetting completely about the message.

Society puts the idea in your head that if you’re not constantly talking to twenty friends a day, that you’re lonely and no one wants to be friends with you. There’s too much weight on popularity. Especially for teens. Not everyone will like you and not everyone will be friends with you. This is a hard lesson to learn from high school to college because no one teaches you that. You learn the hard way. And, after a few battered bruises to your ego, you grow thicker skin and learn what’s more important. It’s much more valuable to have 5 strong relationships with ride-or-die friends than 50 minute friendships where not one of them would drive you to the airport if you needed it.

Part of self-care is realizing who is important to you and who supports you unconditionally. Self-care is not selfish. The most important person in your life is you. If you don’t take care of yourself, no one else will. So make sure you carve time out for self-care. Self-care is making sure you stay alive, healthy, and happy, so you can support yourself and be a source of happiness for yourself and even others. Self-care should be part of our daily rituals. Reflections, exercise, disconnecting, or quality time with yourself or a loved one. Practice gratitude, pamper yourself, have that bubble bath, or give yourself a break from cooking and order food. Do something nice for yourself each day. Love yourself a little bit each day. Self-care is a part of life.