Here is something I have been thinking about, because now that the weddings are over, and my volunteer stuff always slows down in the summer, I have maybe a little too much time to think. I seem to have become a disaster as a friend. Actually, that's probably over-stating the case, because "disaster" makes me sound important, and I'm pretty sure no one misses me (I warned you: whining).
So anyway. A couple of years ago, I noticed with one of my groups of friends, no one instigated getting together unless it was me. Which of course makes you wonder, if I stopped trying to get us together, would anyone care?
It was right in the thick of when my migraines were the very worst, so I just quit doing it. I'm not sure it was a conscious decision-- it wasn't like I was going for revenge, or even then they'll be sorry, I just didn't have the energy, so I didn't. And since I was the only one who was getting the group together (or at least I was the only when including me in their get-togethers?), we didn't see each other for quite awhile.
Then an event came up that was very important to one of the women. The event announcement was a group email, not specifically addressed to me, but I replied and said I would attend. And I did plan on attending, but I hadn't written it into my calendar and there was a lot going on during that two week period, and with one thing and another, I forgot about it.
Which is totally on me, of course. I forgot about it so thoroughly that I didn't even realize I'd missed it until a week later when I was making my plans for Saturday, which included going to this event, and then looked at the event announcement and realized it had happened the week before. I felt awful about missing it, but we were leaving on a trip the next day, and I didn't do anything about it until two weeks later when we got back. I know. It was badly done on my part. I'm not trying to make you feel sorry for me, I'm just trying to figure out how to navigate my non-existent social life.
So anyway. When I sat down to figure out how best to grovel, I realized, wait a minute. No one had contacted me at all. No one contacted me or texted me and said, where are you? or even after the fact, what happened? we missed you! No one contacted me at all after the original group email.
Maybe nobody cared that I had missed it. Maybe I was feeling awful for no reason. This was a group of women that I felt very close to a dozen years ago, but it had been a long time since we had met regularly. Maybe the time for us to be friends had passed.
So now I haven't seen those women for at least a year, other than running into one of them at a large social event last winter--we chatted as if nothing had happened. And I guess it's fine. But similar things seem to be happening with all my friends. I have plenty of acquaintances, plenty of people who seem happy to see me if I run into them at church or the grocery store. We still get invited to things as a couple (everyone loves my spouse). But if I had something difficult happen to me, I think the only people I would call would be one or both of my sisters.
Is this OK? Is it OK to not really have friends? I do miss it. I miss when we had kids at home and getting together happened naturally at sports practices or band concerts or school events. I miss when we lived in a neighborhood with a bunch of kids and they were all in and out of our houses all the time. But we don't have kids living at home anymore. Almost no one our age does. And as I've told you before, when I do get together with women friends, I can't figure out what we're supposed to talk about.
I thought maybe typing this out would help me figure out what I want to do about it, but it hasn't. Or at least not yet.
That's all I've got this week.
p.s. I don’t think I have any local readers at the moment, but if I do, please don’t feel like you need to rescue me. I’m fine, just figuring things out. Thanks.
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