Monday, October 18, 2010

Just to bring you all down with me...

I've got a bad case of the nostalgias tonight. Just a warning. I'm in a downright whiny mood.

I miss my best friend. Not only does she live nearly 600 miles away, but we just aren't connected anymore. I mean how connected can you be when you don't share any daily comings and goings, really? Maybe some people can make it work. Just like some people can make long-distance relationships work. I never could. I've never been good at long-distance relationships of any kind. I find that without the memories that are made during daily interactions there is not much there on which to build a friendship, and without the knowledge of the daily occurrences of someone's life, there is just not much to talk about. In a life like my own, where the only things that ever change are the small day-to-day things, there is just nothing to say if you don't share in at least some of those day-to-day things. There's just nothing to talk about. So what's new? Nothing. Still just staying at home with my kids. Still married to my teacher-student hubby. Still living in the same place. Still doing the same things. Nothing new with my kids, nothing new with my family, nothing new with me. If you aren't around to know that I take Squeak to preschool on Tuesdays and go with him to a different preschool on Thursdays, how can you ask about how it's going? If you aren't around to know what book I just finished reading, how can you ask how I enjoyed it?

We used to be so close, she and I. Friends since 5th grade.

After I moved away right before 10th grade she came to spend the summer with me. I went back for a visit the next year. We talked on the phone every Friday night, without fail. Even though I was 600 miles away, I was there with her through her high school crushes, her horrible friend dramas, her meeting and dating and going to prom with her now-husband. She was with me through the tears and loneliness of moving to a new school and trying to make new friends in the middle of high school, and my first boyfriend, my first kiss, school dances and tests and college applications. I don't know when exactly we started to grow apart, maybe we both started going out more on Friday nights, maybe I became too involved in my own life, maybe it wasn't until I moved away to go to college, it might not have even been until I met my now-husband. I can't remember, but somewhere along the way we stopped talking so frequently, stopped being each other's #1 friend and confidant, and we drifted. And then it was hard to get it back. And now I just miss her so desperately but I don't know what to do about it.

If I am honest you will see how selfish I am. One of the things that makes this so hard for me is that she has a new best friend, not just a "best friend," but a true-blue BFF, and here I am as alone as ever. No, not alone, because I have my husband and my kids and my sisters, but with no one to take her place. I have friends, even some "best friends," but I don't have another her. It sounds pathetic, but I have not made another true friend like her since, well, her, in 5th grade. No true-blue best friend forever.

And writing this, I know how pathetic it sounds, how like a forlorn lover I sound. Jealous because she's moved on and I haven't. Seriously. How messed up does that sound? But I just miss her, and maybe even more than that, I miss having someone who *gets* me, who I can laugh with and be childish with and have heart-to-hearts with and who I can have inside jokes with (sentence-ending prepositions be danged right now!). I mean someone other than my husband, because as much as I love and adore him and our relationship, sometimes you just need a girl friend.

And possibly the worst thing about all this is that I don't foresee my situation changing anytime soon, because, let's face it, I am just no good at making friends. You'd think after 8 school-changing moves in my growing-up years I would be an old pro, but really I just suck. I am horrible at making friends. And even when I have friends, I am horrible at making friendships evolve (since I've already made this whole thing sound like dating, let's just go with it even further). I can be surface friends with someone for a very long time, and no matter how much I may like that person or want to have a deeper friendship with them, I just don't know how to do it.

Basically I'm screwed.

And I'm a loser.

And I'm lonely.

And I miss my Mag.

And I'm a big-time whiner.

And I'm going to bed.

6 comments:

diane26 said...

Sometimes I think that's one of the sacrifices of motherhood. I have not had a real true BFF since I had my kids. All my friends have moved on and are working or busy with their own lives. Its sad, I miss it too.

Olivia said...

After moving around the globe quite a bit, I totally get you! I feel lost, lonely, and nostalgic too at times. It can be tough.

Hugs for you!

Olivia

-A said...

Shortly after reading this post I came upon this quote in my reading . . .

"You can go through life and make new friends every year -- every month practically -- but there was never any substitute for those friendships of childhood that survive into adult years. Those are the ones in which we are bound to one another with hoops of steel."

My childhood BFF and I live minutes away from each other and yet see/talk to each other rarely and really *talk* to each other next to never. As much as I love her and wish we'd been able to stay a bit closer, our lives have just progressed so differently that it's hard to even relate (that and I can't get past the derision her husband conveys toward mine).

I think it's probably really common for people, particularly women and even more specifically stay-at-home-moms, to yearn for the BFF relationship of childhood, but not have the time and energy to really make it work.

Plus, how exactly would you go about it? "Hey, I think you're pretty great. Want to be my new BFF?" Part of the reason childhood friendships emerge and last has to be because children are not afraid of assuming that everyone wants more friends.

-A said...

I'm not sure that made nearly as much sense as it did in my head . . .

cat said...

A, it made sense to my head!

Where did you find that quote? It sounds familiar to me... It's probably true, which sucks. Those of us who have moved (several times) since childhood are probably just out of luck! :(

-A said...

The quote is from No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency.

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