Like most teenage girls, I used to keep a diary from time to time.

My freshman year of college, my parents decided to pull up the carpet in our bedrooms and replace it with hardwood flooring. I was not at all excited about this, because it meant having to gut out each room and go through everything that was inside. I consider myself to be a bit of a hoarder, so of course, this took a very very long time. I came home over fall break to help aid with this operation and found myself up late going through third-grade knick-knacks and middle-school class photos. In this long night of organization, I happened to find the diary I had been keeping during my freshman year of high school. I flipped through love-sick descriptions of guys I had gone to school with, lists of football theme ideas, and bullet points of favorite movies and songs of the time. Before putting it away, I flipped through it one last time to see if I had missed any dumb love confession or a dramatic day at school. In the very dead middle of the journal was a five-page entry that I didn’t recognize. I had surely written it though- recognizing the way that I write the letter “s” from the bottom up. The first page read,

“I feel like I’m someone who wasn’t meant to have friends. And it’s okay. I am ready to accept it. I am tired of feeling like an outsider to people I have known my entire life. I am tired of pouring myself into people and getting nothing in return. I’m tired of being excluded and not invited. I’m tired of questioning everything I do and say, wondering if I’m the reason I don’t have friends. I’m tired”

I will never forget how taken aback I was, having forgotten that I had once felt this way.

I began to sob. I suddenly felt 15 again, sitting in my school uniform, sitting at a lunch table of girls giggling over plans I wasn’t included in. I began to mourn- mourn the girl I once was, and every tear she shed for friends who didn’t celebrate her. I got angry- angry that she didn’t get to have a strong-knit friend group and late-night drives with people her own age. And I also began to laugh. Laugh tears of relief, knowing that 15-year-old me, whether she knew it or not, had the absolute most to look forward to.

At this point, I had been in college for around 3 months, and it had truly changed my entire life. Believe it or not, my older brother, Miles, was the one who registered me for recruitment, insisting that I should at least give it a try. I was so calloused coming to school. Like 15-year-old me stated in that journal entry- I was exhausted. I was tired of unrequited effort. Of girls being straight-up mean. Tired of not even knowing I was being left out until I opened up Snapchat. The last thing I wanted to do was join a sorority and find more people just like the ones I had just left behind. I decided to go through recruitment anyway, hoping at least to meet some people and get my bearings on campus. I went to house after house, repeating the script that I had taught myself until finally, I walked through the pale blue door with the lion door knocker. The doors of Alpha Delta Pi. 

There was a certain ease that followed me after that day. A small glimpse of assurance that maybe- just maybe- I had found somewhere that I belonged. One week and some change later, I ran home. Back through those pale doors in a sea of girls who somehow knew my name, covered in pink feathers and blue glitter. In the rage of the storm- I had a moment where everything stood still. Every high school hard-time, left-out, no invite pain that I had felt, began to melt away. I felt the callousness of my heart begin to fade. I felt the searing hurt of lack of connection- lack of genuine friendship- begin to soothe at the hands of a sisterhood that welcomed me. No- not just welcomed me- chose me. I sat and read that journal entry and smiled with tears falling down my cheeks- for both versions of freshman year- college, and high school. I cried for high school Lydia- never being able to forget what it felt like to be fifteen-year-old me. Wishing, just for a moment, that she could see who we had become. I smiled though, for a nineteen-year-old me. A true moment of gratitude that I had found a sisterhood that welcomed me for all I was, and for all I could be. A group of women that were committed to my growth- committed to both genuine friendship and sisterhood. Women that lived for one another above themselves- cheering each other on and pursuing one another with steadfast intention. Best friends- girls that confirm that you were made for friends, and the ones you’ve been waiting for all your life are now your sisters too.

There is no short story that could quickly sum up exactly what ADPi has done for me. No memoir or five-paragraph essay could serve as proof that Alpha Delta Pi has changed my life forever. But, there is that freshman year of high school diary entry- a moment frozen in time. And there is me now- 20-year-old, sophomore in college me, that lives in the blue door ADPi house with all of my very best friends. Me- who gets up every day excited for what may lie ahead- what exciting plan awaits me with the girls that surround me. Just me- a girl who has learned that sisterhood is a reality. It is not false, or fabricated, and it will find you. I guess this blog post is a diary entry in and of itself. I just wish, more than anything, that 15-year-old Lydia could see the sisterhood and connection that awaits her at UK ADPi. I know she would be proud to see the woman I’ve become, and I would tell her to just hang on- the best four years of your life are on their way to you.