Brace Yourselves!

Two posts in two days!

I just wanted to quickly address “the friends thing” as most comments & emails I have got re: my last post has something to do with this.

I wrote here a while back about not having any friends here since we moved from Sydney & received buckets of support from so many people, but I don’t think I have properly expressed my feelings about not having any friends here, and why I keep going on about it.

For eleven years of my life, I was an only child. An only child who moved a lot, do you know what that tends to create? A self-sufficient child who enjoys their own company. I don’t think I had a really good friend until I was in late primary school/early high school – and that was a friendship born of necessity really, as we were the only two people, in the entire town it seemed, who didn’t like Garth Brooks.

In my whole life, up until now & not counting The Boy (who doesn’t even get my sense of humour, sadly), I think I have had four friends – and this is what is hard & makes me a bit down – four good friends that I LIKED and who I looked forward to seeing & talking to & who appreciated me & who I had fun with. Not “work friends” or acquaintances, good friends. Interestingly, each of these people came into my life at different times & was my ‘go to friend’ at the time to the exclusion of all others, which means that I still only had one friend at any one time and, equally interesting, all four of these people now live within about 2 hours of each other in another state, and many, many hours away from me.

I don’t even know if these people know how much I treasured these friendships – more than most people might, I think, because I had never had such a thing as a friend that I ‘clicked’ with, someone with whom I didn’t have to try to get along with and, shockingly to me, wanted to be MY friend. But, even as I loved these people & our relationships, I was never overtly social or outgoing. They would invite me to things that I would either refuse to go to or grudgingly be dragged along to. They would ring me & I would ‘miss’ the call. They would want to come over & I would be busy… all of these things, not surprisingly, makes me a person who it is hard to be friends with. I like people, even friends, in small doses. I like ‘me’ time, very much, after a lifetime of it, & find it hard to give up – I even struggle when The Boy has a day or two longer off work, & I know that’s why I make a terrible host when people come to stay…

…but I miss them. Even if the extent of our interaction sometimes was a fortnightly or monthly meet up. I miss that for the first time in my life, before we moved, I DID have more than one friend. That people came to see me & le Punk when she was born – one of these friends actually drove us to the hospital ( …& now I don’t even know who will watch Punky when I have to go to hospital for bubba#2), & I lament the fact that what we had we will never have again.

I also have resigned myself to the fact that it will be very hard, here, to find anyone that I ‘click’ with like that. I mean, if, in 28 years of living in various places in a couple of states, I’ve only ever accidentally come across FOUR people who ‘get me’… what chance do I have when staying put in a small town…?

I could make acquaintances. Probably easily. But that, for me, requires more effort than the kind of friendship I am talking about. It requires sacrifices of my time & of my personality that I am not willing to make, and the return on that is negligible – I would rather my alone time – but the prospect of not having anyone here, even for the very occasional chat (& LAUGH!), perhaps ever, makes me sad. Especially when I see other people that seem to make friends easily, and friends with anyone at that.

So… there we have it! I guess I’m homesick & missing things & times that were, & feel I “should” have friends – whether I like it or not, or them or not… it feels as though I am abnormal for not wanting a huge social circle or striving to be in one.

That’s why I have enjoyed blogging so much, there are so many people, SO MANY, that I have found through blogging who I find interesting, amusing & fun, and a couple who I know I would have that fabled connection with if we were ever to meet, because already the connection through this medium is uncanny, but even that seems odd – to have these ‘friends’ online & none in real life. It feels as though I am a fraud somehow, as though I am presenting a likeable, amiable side of myself that people I meet don’t get to see – but I don’t think I am… Blogging about things I like & do is much easier than talking to strangers about things I don’t have much interest in, true, but everything I present here is ‘me’, and I am wildly pleased when others stumble in here & find something for them too.

….and who knows… this episode of blogging honesty & emotion might be the end of the draught… but don’t quote me.

PS - Go here to see the same sort of thing put much more eloquently, and with cute pictures. I just clicked on my reader after publishing this & it hit me in the face. Blogging is a strange & curious thing...