Real friends are totally worth it.
this is 100% truth.
the luckiest people in the world are the ones who had a good group of friends since high school and even before then and stayed friends, or reunited after say 5-10 years and relived that or just kept making more friends. They have all those great memories, shared. They can look back at any year and they all went through the same things, they can relate a song from say 2001-02-03-04-05+, etc to their experiences of that year.
can you imagine, having a varied mixture of personalities in the one group, you are all friends. you celebrate together, you go to concerts, you go to each other birthdays, you meet up for lunches, you play sports, you are so close that you all hug each other and it's not uncomfortable, its just normal. you know each others quirks, secrets, tastes, traits, interests.
there is nothing on earth that can really describe that experience. I had that for four years in my early twenties, and i've missed that for 6 years, and even though i enjoy my own time, nothing compares to having a group that you can join in with ....
you can be silly, you don't have to make sense, you can talk for hours, you can play board games, sport, music, talk about a video game or a book. you can attempt jokes and laugh at yourself even if it doesn't come off and then turn that into something else that is funny and random.
i like to tell myself that being alone is fine, and some people really are content with, but f*!k it. I prefer friends and sharing with like minded friends, and friends that i'm not similar to. Just a nice bunch of friends. It's what i once had, and we drifted apart. And for the past 6 years my shyness levels have limited my abilities to do anything like that again.
Nothing compares to a nice bunch of friends. Because in my opinion, it's utopia. And when that drifted away i've become a hopeless nostalgic about how "it was better back then", only because i have chosen to not make the most of it since then and have fallen into this cycle of avoidance.