Oh HGOT, how I feel you, how I agree with everything that was said.
I've been in that situation where you start heading one way and there's a STOP and you have to go back and will you ever have any friends again. I had that summer where three of my four closest friends in my city moved to London or LA and the fourth had disappeared into the romance that would lead to her still-current marriage, and also I hate the summer, and that summer ended with a famous terrorist attack on my city, so ... it was rough! My now-not-local friends encouraged me to buy a computer, I got into that online life, and eventually built up new local friends! This was a long time ago and some of them are not friends anymore, but I learned that I could make new friends again and again and in fact that is what you should do!
We get so many of our ideas of friendship from fiction, maybe because parents of young children are not the best friendship modelers because they are trying to keep the top of their head from exploding, and by the time they circle back to their friends we are busy with our little friends and don't care. But the problem with fiction as a model for friendship is a little thing our teachers called conservation of characters. It's important for fiction, as without it you get those vaguely autobiographical usually British book series about some dude who's maybe a writer that no one reads except the people who need to tell you that they read it. Conversely, look how cranky people are that the girlies in Sex and the City had the temerity to make new friends at 55! How dare!
Anyway we're left with the impression that we make the friends of our lives in our youth and keep them around more or less forever unless there is drama, and this is absolutely not true. Even if you are lucky enough to have a few friends that hang around, it takes a great deal of real emotional work to keep any kind of relationship going for decades. It's more than hangouts. It's about how you show up, and keep showing up, day after day, even through the rough parts where they've moved away or everyone is over it. As your life changes you make new friends and maybe loose touch with some older ones. Even better, sometimes some older friends turn up, years later, ready to reconnect.
The energy you put forth now in getting good at meeting people and making friends will not just help you through this rough patch but every other rough patch, because you will realize that you've done it before and you can do it again. Which you can!
(Just don't read any of those weird articles that keep popping up about how no one likes group chats and to never read your emails or whatever. I don't know who those articles are for or how they are making money but they are Not For Us and to be avoided. People who like you want to hear from you, the end.)
You could not pay me to be in my twenties again. Unless it was a down payment on a house. And then maybe. But honestly all I would be doing in the house would be crying. So.
I think this might be my new Words to Live By: "Everything you mortals view as a mistake or a misstep or a suboptimal time suck, this supernatural sparkle donkey views as a fountain of mango matcha inspiration dancing to Lorde at the center of my spiritual mini-mall. I don’t fucking know what that means but it’s fine, I just linked a handful of words together and it was fun."
I changed careers completely at 40 and it was miserable and hard and I cried under my desk (if a remote worker cries under her desk and there is no one on zoom to see it, did it really happen.) a whole bunch of times.
I would do it again in a heartbeat. You only get one ride, if you've got the means and desire to turn your life upside down and see what happens, you should do that. Within reason, obv.
I preferred it when I thought a Catherine wheel was a reference to the sister, maybe, because her name is Catherine and she’s watching her life turn like a wheel idk that doesn’t make sense I’ll just keep reading […] OH MY GOD WHAT THE FUCK
Just realized I live for Today in Polly.
But if I don’t feed my kids my anxieties who will eat them.
Thinking "I am on a path to discovery and joy, motherfuckers" is a good companion phrase to "You can always quit" and both would be a great t-shirt.
I already own too many t-shirts but I'm working on it
Oh HGOT, how I feel you, how I agree with everything that was said.
I've been in that situation where you start heading one way and there's a STOP and you have to go back and will you ever have any friends again. I had that summer where three of my four closest friends in my city moved to London or LA and the fourth had disappeared into the romance that would lead to her still-current marriage, and also I hate the summer, and that summer ended with a famous terrorist attack on my city, so ... it was rough! My now-not-local friends encouraged me to buy a computer, I got into that online life, and eventually built up new local friends! This was a long time ago and some of them are not friends anymore, but I learned that I could make new friends again and again and in fact that is what you should do!
We get so many of our ideas of friendship from fiction, maybe because parents of young children are not the best friendship modelers because they are trying to keep the top of their head from exploding, and by the time they circle back to their friends we are busy with our little friends and don't care. But the problem with fiction as a model for friendship is a little thing our teachers called conservation of characters. It's important for fiction, as without it you get those vaguely autobiographical usually British book series about some dude who's maybe a writer that no one reads except the people who need to tell you that they read it. Conversely, look how cranky people are that the girlies in Sex and the City had the temerity to make new friends at 55! How dare!
Anyway we're left with the impression that we make the friends of our lives in our youth and keep them around more or less forever unless there is drama, and this is absolutely not true. Even if you are lucky enough to have a few friends that hang around, it takes a great deal of real emotional work to keep any kind of relationship going for decades. It's more than hangouts. It's about how you show up, and keep showing up, day after day, even through the rough parts where they've moved away or everyone is over it. As your life changes you make new friends and maybe loose touch with some older ones. Even better, sometimes some older friends turn up, years later, ready to reconnect.
The energy you put forth now in getting good at meeting people and making friends will not just help you through this rough patch but every other rough patch, because you will realize that you've done it before and you can do it again. Which you can!
(Just don't read any of those weird articles that keep popping up about how no one likes group chats and to never read your emails or whatever. I don't know who those articles are for or how they are making money but they are Not For Us and to be avoided. People who like you want to hear from you, the end.)
Going up on my vision board today: "I am on a path to discovery and joy, motherfuckers, and that takes time."
“I am on a path to discovery and joy, motherfuckers” is my new mantra. Thank you!
You could not pay me to be in my twenties again. Unless it was a down payment on a house. And then maybe. But honestly all I would be doing in the house would be crying. So.
I think this might be my new Words to Live By: "Everything you mortals view as a mistake or a misstep or a suboptimal time suck, this supernatural sparkle donkey views as a fountain of mango matcha inspiration dancing to Lorde at the center of my spiritual mini-mall. I don’t fucking know what that means but it’s fine, I just linked a handful of words together and it was fun."
I changed careers completely at 40 and it was miserable and hard and I cried under my desk (if a remote worker cries under her desk and there is no one on zoom to see it, did it really happen.) a whole bunch of times.
I would do it again in a heartbeat. You only get one ride, if you've got the means and desire to turn your life upside down and see what happens, you should do that. Within reason, obv.
I'm so glad I'm a paying subscriber now.
I preferred it when I thought a Catherine wheel was a reference to the sister, maybe, because her name is Catherine and she’s watching her life turn like a wheel idk that doesn’t make sense I’ll just keep reading […] OH MY GOD WHAT THE FUCK
What a parenting philosophy! It made me stop in my tracks.