Don't feel compelled to follow anyone on Mastodon. You might even think of it as a way to follow content rather than people. You can follow and unfollow people at will, even if they're your best mate! Other sites seem to focus on following friends and people you know, but sometimes those people post stuff that doesn't interest you. It can be stressful feeling like you must follow someone while not having the head space to process their posts. So don't worry about that here. It's a new start.