Throughout my life, I confided a lot of important, profound things to two or three people I considered my best friends. I felt like they knew my soul, through and through. They could see me. They would never go anywhere. They would stand up in my wedding to tell an embarrassing story. I was completely confident that these people would be in my life forever. They were as close to family as non-blood relatives could get. I even liked them a whole hell of a lot more than a lot of my real relatives.

The older you get, the less bulls**t you’re willing to put up with.

When you’re young, you just want to be friends with everyone. We care far too much about what other people think of us. We’ll do a lot of shameful, embarrassing, self-destructive things just to make people like us. We’re desperate to be part of the proverbial club.This makes us more inclined toward toxic friendships. We don’t even have the wherewithal to understand the warning signs or to recognize when we’re being walked all over. As you get more mature, you’re willing to deal with that crap less and less. For me, if someone wants to be a shady asshole, they can leave. If someone isn’t going to put the work in to make our friendship sustainable, they can go to hell. I don’t have time for the nonsense anymore. If that means losing friends I had ,and not making any new ones, the hell with it. I don’t care. I’d rather spend my time alone than with someone who makes me feel alone.

The older you get, the less you care about making new friends.

I’ve gotten to the point where making new friends isn’t even on my list of priorities in this life. I’ve seen how people can be. I don’t want to be involved in that storm anymore. I’m over it. Completely and totally over it. Done. Finished. I’m still a friendly person. I chat it up with people, I hang out with people, I go do things with people, but I don’t really let them in. I don’t tell them secrets. I don’t become vulnerable. I’m past the point of making a new best friend. I have my family, and I’m completely OK with that. As sad as that may sounds, I’m good. Trust me, I’m good. When you get to a certain age, making new friends stops being something that interests you. Because you’ve already been there and done that, and it ended up sucking major ass.

The older you get, the less you trust sh**ty people.

I’ve been on this Earth for 22 years, and if I’ve learned one thing, it’s that people are the goddamn worst. When you’re a kid, you expect that people have your best interest at heart. You trust them with your heart. When you get a little bit older and lot more jaded, you start to see the truth: people are almost entirely self-serving, and no one gives a crap about you. It was astonishing to see so many close friends walk away from me with such incredible ease. That was a cruel eye-opener, to watch the best people I knew abandon me. Luckily, that made walking away myself much simpler. I toughened up because I had to. You can’t survive this sordid population without a thick skin.

The older you get, the less you choose to put anyone before yourself.

When you stop caring about other people and start loving yourself, that’s when things really change for the better. A switch flips somewhere along the road between early adulthood and real adulthood. You stop doing things to please other people and start doing things to please yourself. A lot of friendships will get trashed by this simple fact alone. Once you stop letting people treat you like garbage, most people don’t see a use for you anymore. The older you get, the less you stop looking for a ride-or-die friend. Instead, you start improving yourself. Friends will leave you. You will never leave you. That’s the real s**t, isn’t it?