For those who know me, it may come as little surprise that making new friends is not my strong suit. People often inform me that, before getting to know me, they believed I hated them, and I tend to avoid situations where more than one person is speaking at once. Having lived in one place, gone to one school from kindergarten through high school (then Lusher, now Willow), and worked the same day job for over a decade (shout out Prytania Theatre), friends always felt kind of built into the experience of being a person. Even if we weren’t close, the people I grew up with brought an almost familial comfort well into adulthood. Perhaps this is why I always hated summer camp: it was foreign, it was brief, and I was counting the minutes until I could return to safety. When I got to college here at Loyola, I tried a similar strategy—wait out the unfamiliars—but the kindness (and persistence) of a determined few helped me along my way. Without my now good friend Amelia striking up a conversation with me every single day in class together, there’s a chance I never would have ventured outside of my bubble.
As it turns out, friends aren’t a natural fact of life. They aren’t promised, as almost nothing is. If you want them, you have to cultivate them—a skill that requires practice and patience and vulnerability. A few years ago, I decided to start working on this skill in earnest—slowly putting myself in situations outside of my comfort zone, with people I didn’t know, even when I’ve felt too tired to do so—but this past year has been what I’ve dubbed my Year of Yes. I tried as often as I could to say yes to anything and everything I was invited to do or attend, a strategy that has left me utterly exhausted but also more fulfilled than ever.
During this year I’ve said yes to lots of things: birthday parties, concerts, festivals, markets, public speaking, event planning, shooting weddings, as well as our ANTIGRAVITY fundraisers which both drew such a crowd it made me teary. I said yes to my colleagues, my closest friends, and people I barely knew. If I was asked, and I was free, I mustered all my spare energy to get my ass there. I did this because the world I want to live in is one with a robust social infrastructure, where the love and support of the people in my community keep me warm through the cold nights of financial woes and political havoc. But that infrastructure does not exist if people don’t build it, and it’s never enough to will something into the world by wishing for it. As I wrote in these pages three years ago, “the only way things get done is by doing them, simple as that.” Every yes, be it enthusiastic or mildly sacrificial, was one more thread sewn into a sturdier social fabric.
Not everyone suffers from being an introvert like me. For some, saying yes is easy, and charming strangers is second nature. These enchanting individuals have often been the ones shepherding me out of my shadows, and in return I have offered the stability that those shadows helped me fortify. It’s a mutually beneficial exchange, but I find it most rewarding when both halves are trying their hand at their weakest skills, inching towards some sort of equilibrium. It’s best when all parties are putting in work. It’s a humiliating endeavor, assessing the most undeveloped parts of ourselves—there’s no glamor in picking up the five pound weights. But it’s the only way forward.
Community is also not a natural fact of life. It is work, despite the loud faction who’s convinced we don’t owe each other anything. Community requires cultivation, and that means exercising our weakest muscles so that we can support more than just our own weight. It demands sacrifice and inconvenience, which will look different for everyone. For some, it will mean going out even when you’re tired, or showing up to a birthday party where you probably won’t know anyone. For others, it may mean staying in to meet a deadline or preparing for some future event. Always, it will mean showing up for someone else the way they need you to.
I turned 30 this year, a decade I’ve long been told is notoriously difficult for making friends. And I know that I’ll still want to stay in, complain that I’m tired, and resort to my wallflower tendencies on occasion. But I strangely feel more equipped and excited than I ever have to continue branching out. I’ve been working out the weakest parts of myself for a while now, and I am stronger because of it. Perhaps the most annoying facet of strength is that the only way to acquire it is through consistency. There’s no magical answer—we just have to continue to do difficult things until they’re easier. And I’m here to tell you they do get easier. —Marisa Clogher
illustration by Laura Frizzell
January 2026 cover by Rachel Speck
