I can't make a single normal friend.
I can’t make a single normal friend. Not one. Not that not being the stereotype of “normal” is at all a bad thing, of course. All my friends are a little unusual: One goes into the woods to light candles and worship something I’ve never heard of; another is a gender I can’t pronounce; one dissociates and writes code at 2 a.m. while not blinking and singing Bad Omens; another is obsessed with serial killers. I support them all, but I can’t help but wonder, is there something about me that attracts unusual folks? I look around at other people and their friends laughing and talking about movies, and I wonder how my friend (lying on the floor talking about aliens) found me. Is there something about me that isn’t “normal,” or something that attracts them? Is there a way I can make more “normal” friends? My parents worry about me, they say I’ll be a loser in college if I can’t make “normal” friends. I don’t know what it is, and I don’t want to lose my friends, but how can I befriend more normals, to satisfy my family at least?

—I Swear I’m Normal

Dear I Swear,

Making a particular kind of friend to satisfy your family is a bad idea. I would go as far as to say that taking orders from your parents when it comes to who you socialize with, and putting a lot of stock in their views, makes you pretty “unusual” in your own way! I also think that you’ll soon realize that very few people are really normal—everyone has their quirks and strange ways and unique backstory.

Now, if what you want are cisgender, heterosexual, neurotypical friends with mainstream interests, those people do exist. Joining a fraternity or sorority when you get to college would probably up your odds of being connected with people who fit this profile. If there is something about you that is giving off “not normal,” and might turn them off, I suppose you could probably deemphasize it with enough effort. You wouldn’t be the first person to study a particular corner of social media and recreate the style, interests, and patterns of speech you see there, in an effort to tweak your presentation. But I can’t seriously endorse this plan. You’d be putting a lot of effort into how you look and your social circle looks, without any regard for how your life felt. That’s a recipe to feel like a fraud, and to experience the loneliness that comes with wondering whether people would still like you if you were authentic.

Instead, I suggest erasing the whole normal/not normal thing from your mind and taking a different approach entirely. Ask yourself “What do I want to feel when I’m around my friends, and am I currently feeling it?” and “What do I want my friendships to add to my life, and are they currently adding it?” For example, maybe right now you want to feel understood, and you don’t because your friends are too busy writing code. Or, maybe you want to go to movies and discuss shared interests, and that’s not happening because your friends only want to talk about extraterrestrial life. So the path forward would be to look for people who are good listeners and who are into the things you’re into, not to go on the hunt for “normal.”

And remember that whoever you’re trying to hang out with, it will be helpful to take a sincere interest in who they are and what they care about. You might feel more connected to your current friends if you, for example, asked for some details about whatever it is they’re worshiping in the woods (and why) instead of dismissing it as “something I’ve never heard of.” And whatever that allegedly unpronounceable gender identity is (I can’t imagine learning how to say it is actually out of reach for a person on their way to college!), I’m sure you could get your head around it with a bit of effort. This—paired with some real care about what that identity means of them—might really deepen your relationship. And as you meet your college classmates and get to know some better, make sure you’re putting as much thought into the kind of friend you are to them as much as you’re thinking about how weird or not weird they are.