Looking For A Bestie

Back in the good old school days, making friends was pretty easy.  If you saw someone riding the swings, you could just walk up and ask "Do you want to see who can swing the highest?"  Bam! Instant friendship right then and there. As the years go by though, it gets more and more difficult to find friends with common interests where you feel that connection. 

This is something that I am struggling with presently.  It seems as though everyone has their besties and I am an outsider.  So when I came across this article today from the New York Times, I had an "I am not alone" moment. Apparently, there are many people who feel the way I do. 

I grew up in a small town in Southeast Michigan. I had a group of friends that I spent every weekend with throughout high school and the first two years of college. When I had the opportunity to move to Seattle, I thought it would be a fun adventure.  I did not realize at the time that this also meant suddenly having no friends. I knew absolutely no one.  Shortly after getting a job as a waitress,  I made new single friends, one of whom was certain to have a party every weekend.  

When I finished my degree and started my career, the restaurant friends faded away.  I now had strictly work friends, the kind of friends you spend every coffee break and lunch with chatting away about your lives, the movies you have seen, the shows you watch, and the occasional bitch session about work. The kind of friendships that fill the friend void during the day, but do not go past the threshold of the office elevator once you leave. 

Six years later, my husband and I started our family.  Suddenly, I was a stay at home mom.  My work friends all but disappeared.  Those first six months were a lonely adjustment. Whole days would pass where I would realize that I had not spoken to another adult. Once my daughter was old enough to go to Gymboree, play groups, and Mommy and Me swim lessons, I was able to meet other moms. Some I liked, and am still in contact with.  Others, our only connection was the fact that our children were in wombs at the same time.  That does not make for a strong friendship basis. 


Now that we have moved to Texas, I am back in the no-friend zone again.  Yes, through the magic of Facebook, I am still in contact with friends from previous phases of my life, but I have no one local to hang out with or who will go see Magic Mike with me. (Truth be told, I would rather see the new Wes Anderson movie instead, but I do love me some Matthew McCaunghey.)

I work at a school now, but at 43, I am one of the oldest people there.  The young marrieds go out for the occasional girl's nights together, the singles and divorcees go barhopping together, and the marrieds with kids are all wrapped up in their kids' sports.  My kids are not athletic at all.  My son would just as soon duck from a ball than catch it and my daughter does not like "getting all hot and sweaty, eww!"

I'm not sure how one goes about making friends as an adult. My daughter has a best friend who spends at least one afternoon a week at my house during the school year.  I happen to work with her mom too, so it seems like a friendship between us would just naturally flow.  Unfortunately, it has not happened. She is always polite to me, but never particularly warm. I can't really imagine spending time with her outside of work and away from the kids. I think it would involve a lot of long, awkward periods of silence. 

Sometimes I am jealous of the people who have lived their whole lives in one town.  When you move as much as I have, you have a few friends scattered here and there, but you do not have that special best friend who has known you forever, and loves you anyway.  Someone who will drop everything at a moment's notice if you need her.  I'm not sure that those friendships even exist if you have not known one another from childhood. I'm still hoping and wishing I can find one though.

 

My Secret Obsession

I am in a love/hate relationship.  I know that the best thing for me is to leave, but just when I think I am out, I get pulled back in. My love borders upon obsession and my hate could be closely aligned with jealousy. My dirty lover is Facebook.  There, I've admitted it. 

I joined Facebook around Christmas 2008.  I barely logged on to it at first and I certainly did not understand things like notifications, likes, and chat emoticons.  Back then, people would send you virtual hearts, hugs, and super pokes. Farmtown, Farmville, and Mafia Wars were all the rage for gamers.  There were fun quizzes to take that revealed your personality traits or likes and dislikes.  It was a place to catch up with long lost friends from high school, childhood neighbors, and cousins you may not have seen or heard from in years.  It was fun.  And addicting. 

Over the years, Facebook has changed.  The virtual gifts are no more.  Quizzes are a thing of the past and I don't know of anyone still logging on at a certain time so that they can harvest their wheat crop before it withers and dies. Now that we are all connected, Facebook has morphed into more of a brag book and a place to rant or solicit sympathy for the mundane problems of modern life. The latest rage is to post Internet memes, some of which are funny or cute, and others which are annoyingly preachy. I will not be sad to see this fad die away as all the others that came before. It is getting a bit much with the same memes posted over and over with new, and lesser witty captions. 

There is a trend now to check in at whatever fabulous place you are, tag your posse with you and post pics of your merriment for all to see. I am guilty of this.  I admit it.  It is taking keeping up with the Jones to the digital age.  And yes, I will also admit that there are times when I see posts in my feed that make me feel jealous that I was not included or that I am no longer of the age where I can wear a sexy little mini-dress and go dancing in a bar. Really, no one wants to see a 40-ish mom gyrating in the steel cages on the dance floor.  

Then there are those who have had a bad day and take their rants to the Internet to share their frustration.  Guilty as charged here.  I've done it too.  When my son fell in gym class, breaking his leg, and the coach tried to tell me  he was fine and just carrying on because I was there, I was livid. I know my child and knew that he was not crying for my benefit.  When the x-rays confirmed a fracture, I took to Facebook.  Not the best decision I ever made, that is for sure.  One of my friends says her rule is to only post the positive to Facebook.  The thing is, life isn't always sunshine and rainbows.  Sometimes things frustrate you and you have to tell someone. Unfortunately, when you tell everyone you know, it comes back to bite you in the ass.  Trust me on this one.  

Although Facebook has changed a lot over a short span, we have also changed how we use it. Once we reconnected with people from our past, we began to tell and show them how much better our lives are than theirs.  We shared our daily frustrations, and if we are so inclined, political and religious rants as well. 

 Reading both the good and the bad in my feed, is both addicting and annoying at the same time.  On the one hand I like reading about the daily minutiae of my friends and family.  On the other hand, I find myself disliking some of them because of it.  I realize that some of my friends and family are actually quite annoyingly self-aggrandizing or possess some radical religious or political beliefs that either surprise the hell out of me or conflict with my own.  I waste too much of my time checking my feed and seeing who liked my posts and reading their comments.  I want out of this relationship with Facebook.  It drains away my time from things and people that actually matter to me, but Facebook, I just can't quit you. I can only hope you evolve and change again into something a bit more tolerable and less addicting.