Tuesday, October 25, 2011

closeness lost

Overshare warning: more confessions today. So yes, I'm lonely and struggling with big questions about myself. While it is super-extra great to be near all four of my sisters (and nephew as a bonus) for the first time in 23 years, I have no friends here. The one potential, who was also a newcomer and with whom I had an eerie number of things in common, decided to return to her native San Francisco. Not that I've given up. I have begun forcing myself to do things I don't love doing, since I am a bit introverted, like joining activity groups.

But the whole experience has made me face the fact that it's a long while since i made a new true friend, and I continue (oh damn the overseas living) to lament the distance, literal & figurative, between me and most of those few I used to have. And i seem to have forgotten how to forge new friendships. Or maybe I've lost the true desire to do so. I guess I'm having trouble seeing the point as I don't seem to be able to develop the closeness I used to enjoy with various friends.

Have I changed? I think I trust people less than I used to. And frankly, I also find myself finding a lot of people vacuous, unable to converse about important things, or open-up about their emotions. Maybe it's my "high emotional sensitivity" (I've discovered I might be a HSP) that gets in the way? Or has the world changed? Are people too busy, too lazy, or too cyber-connected to feel the need for real intimacy? Intimacy with not just with me, but with real issues, reality, humanity.

Wow, lucky the sun is shining again today or this would seem an even bigger downer. If that's even possible...

5 comments:

  1. Baby steps. You'll get there xo

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  2. Oh, poor you! *hugs* I know how hard it is to move somewhere without friends. When I moved to O-town it was so strange, not knowing anybody - especially since almost all of my friends stayed in my hometown and kept living their lives as usual. And then you make those first few connections and get excited and hopeful, thinking things are turning around, only to have most of those connections fizzle.

    It's definitely hard to make friends as an adult, with all the baggage we accumulate. I think Louis CK sums it up pretty well in one of his standup bits:

    "I have a new friend, which is weird. I’m 43… and I’m a father, I’m divorced, I have a new friend. And it makes me a little sick to my stomach, I don’t like it. You ever get/make a new friend? Young people make new friends easy, cause you’re just young, and you’re just… you’re fabulous. But I’m 43 and when I’m starting to make a friend it’s creepy. It’s creepy, like I hung out with this guy who I don’t know, and then I was like, inside my head I’m like, I wanna see him again. I wanna see this guy again. If I just let him go, I’ll never see him again. I need to say something. And I felt so sick, like I felt so disgusting. Why did it bother me so much to say to this fella, I would like to see you again. It just… I, you know why? I realized it was because I was afraid he might say no. I was afraid of being rejected. So I don’t wanna make him say that but I did, I said I’d really like to uh do uh hang out again. And uh he said, uh yeah ok. And then I ate his a**hole. It’s my new friend."

    (Okay, maybe not the a**hole part, but the rest of it's true!)

    Hang in there! :)

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  3. My dearest JJ... It's very special the way you've so consistently supported me from afar though we never really had the chance to become close face-to-face friends. I truly appreciate it. Thank you.

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  4. My beautiful Carol, if you worked in an office instead of on your computer you'd make lots of friends easily! you're witty and awesome to be with, you just have to get out there :)

    I wish i could be a better friend from afar, i'm just often so tired when i get home, if i'm the comp it's for dumb crap to relax my brain, instead of talking with peopple about real things, and i apologise for that :(

    miss you as always,
    HB

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    1. Thanks H. Yes, thankfully by now, things are starting to look up. Getting out there is tough when you've never had to do it or been that sort of person (I am not shy but I've never been really proactively outgoing and got worse due to the hermitness etc). Anyway, yes, I miss you too...

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