friends
Well. So I had a little bit of sadness this weekend and then I wanted to do this blog post, and the topic of it makes me a little sad sometimes so maybe I'll get to feeling sad over this since I've already been a little sad these days, albeit over something totally unrelated. Okay, enough with the preamble.
I don't know about you, but I don't have very many friends. I feel like I'm surrounded by people who have tons of friends and it only makes me feel like I have none. And this is mostly okay...I figure if it really was NOT okay, it wouldn't be so, since I'm not a troll, I'm reasonably sociable and I'm not an asshole. At least, I don't think I am. But, then I see things that make me start thinking (damn brain!) and I realize that having a very small circle of friends could actually be a detriment to me, particularly later in life.
Take this one, for example. My mom has a friend who's been going through the cancer thing. She had cancer and she had it treated. Then the cancer came back and she's had it treated again. Actually she's recovering from cancer surgery at the moment. And the thing about it is, she has this fabulous network of people around her. She's a person my mom has known for a long long time, worked with way back in the day, when I was a kid, and has remained part of my mom's circle for all that time. And my mom has always had that big circle, of women with kids and women without kids...just, friends. Who have now all drawn together in her hour of need, to help and support and just be there.
And I don't have that.
My sister has it. When the subject has come up, she tends to wave it off, like, "pish posh, I don't have that many friends." But the reality is, she does. She always has had a bigger circle than me. She's a more outgoing person than I am. She loves her quiet and solitude just as our mom and I do, but she also has the other thing. When she has a party, she has a guest list.
I don't have parties. I always think: who would I invite if I decided to have a party? Okay. Um, well, my mom, and my sister, and my daughter. My boyfriend, my friend Bella. My friend Fee that I barely ever see.
...
That's about it. Maybe some of my daughter's friends.
Is that enough? Is that enough friends for a person to have? The thing is, I've always had one close pal who was a real extrovert. Someone who attracted people and could do the work of initializing those relationships. Once I'm in them, I'm pretty good at maintaining them, so long as the people don't drift away, as they often seem to do. I was married for 10 years to someone like that, and while we were together we had tons of friends (over 60 of them came to our wedding). But they gradually fell away and when we eventually split up none of them, I discovered, were really mine. Well that's not entirely fair, since I do still talk to a couple people from that time now and then. But they're not people I see every week or even every month.
I see or hear about groups of women who get together and do stuff on a regular basis. They go out to dinner or cocktails. They go for walks or go to the gym. They take classes or do projects like quilting or cooking. They have book clubs. Why don't I have that? Don't I want that? Sometimes, I want that more than anything else in the whole world. I want people who will phone me up and ask me to go do things. I want people I can phone if I just need to talk about something. But I don't really have that. And I suppose, I don't really need it most of the time. Or else, if I felt that need so keenly all the time, I'd surely be like a crazy person walking down the street mumbling to herself, or I'd be locked up in my apartment with 50 cats or something. Wouldn't I?
I really don't have the answer. All I know is, it's something that preoccupies my mind fairly often. And somehow, I got through this post without getting really sad.
I don't know about you, but I don't have very many friends. I feel like I'm surrounded by people who have tons of friends and it only makes me feel like I have none. And this is mostly okay...I figure if it really was NOT okay, it wouldn't be so, since I'm not a troll, I'm reasonably sociable and I'm not an asshole. At least, I don't think I am. But, then I see things that make me start thinking (damn brain!) and I realize that having a very small circle of friends could actually be a detriment to me, particularly later in life.
Take this one, for example. My mom has a friend who's been going through the cancer thing. She had cancer and she had it treated. Then the cancer came back and she's had it treated again. Actually she's recovering from cancer surgery at the moment. And the thing about it is, she has this fabulous network of people around her. She's a person my mom has known for a long long time, worked with way back in the day, when I was a kid, and has remained part of my mom's circle for all that time. And my mom has always had that big circle, of women with kids and women without kids...just, friends. Who have now all drawn together in her hour of need, to help and support and just be there.
And I don't have that.
My sister has it. When the subject has come up, she tends to wave it off, like, "pish posh, I don't have that many friends." But the reality is, she does. She always has had a bigger circle than me. She's a more outgoing person than I am. She loves her quiet and solitude just as our mom and I do, but she also has the other thing. When she has a party, she has a guest list.
I don't have parties. I always think: who would I invite if I decided to have a party? Okay. Um, well, my mom, and my sister, and my daughter. My boyfriend, my friend Bella. My friend Fee that I barely ever see.
...
That's about it. Maybe some of my daughter's friends.
Is that enough? Is that enough friends for a person to have? The thing is, I've always had one close pal who was a real extrovert. Someone who attracted people and could do the work of initializing those relationships. Once I'm in them, I'm pretty good at maintaining them, so long as the people don't drift away, as they often seem to do. I was married for 10 years to someone like that, and while we were together we had tons of friends (over 60 of them came to our wedding). But they gradually fell away and when we eventually split up none of them, I discovered, were really mine. Well that's not entirely fair, since I do still talk to a couple people from that time now and then. But they're not people I see every week or even every month.
I see or hear about groups of women who get together and do stuff on a regular basis. They go out to dinner or cocktails. They go for walks or go to the gym. They take classes or do projects like quilting or cooking. They have book clubs. Why don't I have that? Don't I want that? Sometimes, I want that more than anything else in the whole world. I want people who will phone me up and ask me to go do things. I want people I can phone if I just need to talk about something. But I don't really have that. And I suppose, I don't really need it most of the time. Or else, if I felt that need so keenly all the time, I'd surely be like a crazy person walking down the street mumbling to herself, or I'd be locked up in my apartment with 50 cats or something. Wouldn't I?
I really don't have the answer. All I know is, it's something that preoccupies my mind fairly often. And somehow, I got through this post without getting really sad.
posted by infobabe | 2:34 p.m.
5 Comments:
I know exactly how you feel, info.
I am quite similar in many ways.
I have quite a lot of friends. Friends who are now no longer where I live since I moved away from them. I do have 1 close friend up here and I have Andy.
He's like you, he doesn't have many friends. And sometimes it gets to him, and like with you I don't know what to say.
I've always kept a lot of friends around me since Uni, as when at school I had few friends, and now I collect them like they're still something new.
But if you had a party, and I could afford to come all that way. I would.
you guys are sweet :)
I do generally feel like as long as I have some contact with people, whether it's at work or online or whatever, to supplement my one or two intimate relationships, I do okay.
this is the first time in my life, though, that my SO is the same kind of personality as me. He only has a couple of intimates too. It's a good thing we like each other!
I do only have a couple of intimates. And one of them is my cat.
you know i had superficial gfs in high school so i always thought that it was dumb to WANT to have a circle of them around you when you got older. then i got married and any friends sort of fell away. now i have about 7 girls (give or take a couple) that i could really count on if anything happened, and i feel really lucky because they are amazing wonderful people.
some days however, i do long for the solitude of not having so many people know my business all the time.
great post ... i've missed ya!
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