A few weeks ago, Sorority Recruitment videos started popping up on my Tik Tok feed. And man, did it bring back some memories that I hoped I wouldn't have to relive in my 30's.
I don't talk much about that phase of my life, because I'm ashamed. I was a different person then, one who was not in a great place mentally, and fell into something I really never wanted to be part of in the first place.
Don't get me wrong, I had some great times. And I have one lifelong friend out of the deal who I may not have met otherwise. But.....
Freshman year, I was timid and shy and awkward. I had come to college with a handful of my best friends from high school, but some stupid high school drama that I don't even really remember broke us apart. So when I got to campus and was living in a dorm with a roommate I didn't know across campus while they all roomed with each other, I felt very alone. I tagged up with an old high school acquaintance who was going through sorority recruitment. And for whatever reason, I joined her, even though I really had no desire to join a sorority at all. I had and still have the tendency to do that, go through something I don't really want to do just because someone asks me nicely to do it.
And it was....so weird. You literally go house to house with a group of other girls and have "meet and greets" with the sorority members. Really, they are evaluating you to see if you are a good fit for their house. And then they vote on you. And if you move forward, you visit the houses that picked you a few more times and then wait and find out if you got a "bid" which is basically an invitation to officially join.
The house I joined was not your stereotypical sorority, I'd say. The girls are looked so different than one another, not cookie cutter versions of what you imagine a sorority girl to look like. I immediately became friends with girls older than me- some much older. Most of my friends were seniors and I was a freshmen. I was a young freshman, too. Barely 18. When I look back now and realize the difference in a 21/22 year old about to graduate and a newly 18 year old, that's a big difference.
Anyways, flash forward to my sophomore year, which was one of the hardest, most chaotic years of my entire life. My senior friends had graduated, and while I had other friends, I felt pretty alone. I was living with three other girls, but my friendship with two of them turned incredibly toxic. I should have known one of them would, I had been warned by several others. And I personally witnessed her try to sabotage another friend of ours who was on a diet by switching her foods in the middle of the night to non diet foods. Alas, because of the toxicity and awkwardness of us not getting along anymore, I hid in my room most of the time. And I began to turn to alcohol to calm my anxiety and kick on my "brave" switch. There were nights I sat in my closet crying, talking through the wall to the one roommate/friend I did still get along with, afraid to come out of my room. There was also the time one of the girls smeared her taco bell all over my door and was threatening me, or the time I drank too much on Halloween, threw up like the exorcist, and was left alone on my bedroom floor without my phone. I had to crawl around the apartment to find it so that I could call for help. Oh, and there was also the time I confided in my friends that a guy at a party made me feel very uncomfortable and that I was pretty sure he assaulted me and they made fun of me for it.
I became pretty depressed, missed class a lot and got behind on school. And I was still in the sorority- which preached sisterhood and being forever tied to each other but girls were stabbing each other in the back left and right.
Eventually, my chapter closed. This was after my friend Sam joined, thank God, because meeting her and having her in my life is definitely something I am thankful for. But because our sorority wasn't exactly the popular one on campus, we were losing money. We did not have enough to keep us going. And after we closed our doors, it was like the promise of sisterhood did, too. People broke off into little groups and stayed close to who they wanted to stay close to, but long gone were the days that we were "all in this together".
Things got better after that- I found a good group of friends that I felt safe around, the drama and toxicity started to seep out of my life, and I was a much happier person in my last years in college.
I get jealous when I see friends of mine hanging out with their old sorority sisters, or when I see weddings and people have their entire sorority there, singing and dancing and loving on the bride. Or just the overall pride they have for the sorority they were in. I just don't have that, nor do I have many happy memories of those days to look back on now. I look back and am ashamed, and I wonder if I wasted two years of my life. I wonder what could have been different if I had never rushed, if I joined the clubs on campus that I had actually wanted to join as a freshman.
There may be people who read this from that time in my life. I am hopeful that some of you know you did make a positive impact on my life and I hold you dearly in my heart. You may not even know all these stories (and there are many more). And there may be some people who feel I hurt them. I'll own that, I probably did hurt people. I'm not making excuses for myself but I will say I am a wildly different person now that I was then. I don't even know that girl. So I am sorry if I hurt you.
Over time, I have begun to heal from my painful memories of college. You may be wondering why I am writing this post at 34 years old. And it's because I have never really openly shared much about those times, and for me, sharing is healing. Sharing is growth. And again, you may think I'm being dramatic but the truth is some pretty traumatic things happened to me at age 18/19 that I never want to relive again. My college years were certainly not the best days of my life as many people claim them to be. I hesitate to say whether I'd go back to change it, mostly because that may mean I never would have met Sam. And not only is she one of my best friends, but because of Sam I have met so many amazing people who are in my life today! But I'm choosing to believe our paths would have crossed some how, some way.
My lesson here is this: you do you. Don't do something because other people think you should. And if you are in a toxic friendship, get out. You will find new people who love and support you.
Ending this post with a photo of Sam and I because I cannot bear to post any of the completely embarrassing photos there are of me and I do not want to share photos of any of the other girls in the sorority. They have their truths, this is mine.
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