The Truth about Writing Friendology

(Am I a Poser?)

When I was 12 years old, I had a really painful belief that I didn’t belong anywhere.

I was a hyperactive ADHD-er who couldn’t keep his hands to himself or his mouth shut. I spent a lot of time in the principal’s office, with a likely overwhelmed teacher back in the classroom I came from, probably hoping I would take my time coming back. I don’t blame them. I was a menace in a sixth-grade classroom.

I struggled to understand myself. I kept doing all these things I didn’t want to do, and they were causing people to pull away from me. I felt like there was a bug in my operating system or something — some fundamental issue in the way I had been designed.

I remember one day at my church small group I was zoning out and not paying attention, and one of the other sixth graders took his shoe off and threw it at me to try to get my attention. It hit me square in the eye, and it hurt like hell. I remember starting to cry, then being embarrassed that I was crying, then running out into the halls of our church and just wandering them for 30 or 40 minutes by myself until small group was over and I could go back home with my family.

Some young part of me is still walking those halls. Still feeling that pain of not fitting in. Still wondering if there’s something inherently wrong with me.

When I was 12, I was completely blind to who I was. I had no inner sense of self or value. But when I was 13, I had a life-changing experience that introduced me to those things. I met God at a youth group retreat, with those same kids who had caused me so much pain the year prior standing right beside me. I had a transcendental experience of receiving an identity: beloved. It was a moment during a worship set that I still have a hard time describing to this day.

The best I can explain is that a blinding light flooded my vision and a great energy surged through my body. I didn’t hear a “voice” per se, but I had a profound understanding instilled into me that I was loved, chosen, adored. It was an inflection point for me. The idea that God loved me, had a plan for my life, and created me on purpose sank deep into me and began healing that boy wandering the hallways.

Fast forward 18 years, I’ve gone from having zero friends to being a groomsman in 17 weddings, with an 18th coming up in a few months. I would consider myself disproportionately blessed when it comes to having vibrant, longstanding, life-giving friendships to lean on. The pain and isolation I felt as a kid have been transformed into a resolute desire to be a healing force to that same pain in other people.

I’ve become so captivated by the topic of friendship that I’ve started writing about it for friends and strangers online. And just within the past few weeks, that endeavor has started to gain traction.

My post “5 Simple Ways to Be a Better Friend” somehow got picked up by the algorithm on here, and I doubled my subscribers in a matter of four days. A microphone has been handed to me

. It’s been surprising, energizing, and more than a little bit intimidating.

But here’s the thing:

Even with all those incredible friendships, even with the healing I’ve experienced, even with a growing audience reading my words,

I still struggle to believe I belong.

Some days I feel completely disconnected, even in a room full of people I love.

Some weeks, my only real interaction is 45 minutes of Fortnite with a friend across the world.

There are people whose weddings I was in who I haven’t spoken to in years.

I’ve never studied friendship formally. I have no credentials. I’m not a therapist. And I still have my moments of being a shitty friend.

Some people have started DMing me on here, asking for friendship advice, and I have to consciously mute the voice yelling “POSER” in my head as I try to help them make this crazy disconnected world make sense.

To be honest, this same voice speaks almost every time I go to create something. For a long time, it was a whisper in my ear when I went to share my photography. Then it was a buzzing in my head every time I hit publish on a YouTube video. And now it’s the loudest it’s ever been as I’ve set my aim on writing, and this topic of friendship.

It’s kind of ironic to me that the voice of fear and insignificance that I face when I create on Substack is the same voice that kept me from creating connection and friendship for so long. It’s the same voice that I’m trying to help people battle on here.

And the only way around it is through it.

That sense of identity I received at 13 is at the core of what I’m trying to highlight on this platform. It’s also the only thing that helps me push through my own sense that I’m the wrong guy to do this in the first place.

I don’t feel the need to try to replicate my experience for everyone. I think everyone’s journey is completely different and I respect that. But I do want to be a guide, or a signpost if you will, pointing to that deep inherent value and belovedness within every person. I believe that is the deepest foundational component of our lives that determines the level of connection and intimacy we get to experience with the people around us.

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I’m not writing Friendology because I’ve mastered friendship. I’m writing because I need it. I’m writing it from a deep place of need in my own life, and a desire to be a student of it.

Henri Nouwen writes in his book The Wounded Healer:

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find, it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.”

Henri’s words summarize my goals on here really well. Yes, I feel that I have some thoughts to add to the conversation that could help someone a few steps behind me on the friendship journey, but more than anything I want people to feel seen. I want people to understand the collective pain we’re experiencing as a result of the weird world we’re living in, and I want to initiate the right conversations that need to happen for us to move toward connection in the midst of it.

I’ve had to push past a lot of fear to create what I have created on Substack so far. But that push is what I am here to help others do.

So I press on.