my friendster profile to the contrary, i have no friends. i have lots of acquaintances, some of whom i've known for years on end. lots of them are my brother's friends. but would i invite any of them to come over and watch a movie? nope. and really, how sad is it that a twenty-six-year-old woman has to hang on to her kid brother's shirttails to get into some kind of social scene?
i know something is missing because i'm having dreams about it. dreams where someone is paying attention to me. sometimes they're holding me, sometimes it's really just that someone is talking nicely to me. the worst thing in the world is having a satisfying dream life with characters out of your own imagination, none of whom actually exist. in places that aren't real. because then, you have to wake up. i haven't had close physical contact with another person in a really long time. and i'm not even talking about that kind of close physical contact (that'll be two years in january). i haven't hugged someone. really hugged someone, not those stupid little social hugs that all the hipsters do. the kind of hug that's like a warm blanket and a plate of chocolate chip cookies and your favorite hiding place you had as a kid all at the same time. i haven't sat with someone's arm around me, or leaned my head on someone's shoulder. in a REALLY LONG TIME.
i wasn't always like this. i had friends, really close friends. a whole big collective of them, one of those "urban tribes" that everyone is so busy talking about these days. in fact, i had two of them, one for each state that i inhabited. we weren't shy about showing affection, either--there were hugs and cuddles abounding. enough so that i never even missed having a boyfriend, really.
then things went weird. i'm not really sure how they went weird, but it ended in everyone going away, or hating each other, or just losing touch. and to be honest, i'm not very good at keeping in touch in the first place. people move away, and things change, and i end up being "the one who didn't move on." except that for the maryland people, i'm actually the one who moved. they're all more or less still around. but grown up. charlene is married and bryan is in birmingham and serenity is in baltimore with neal and jenn is in baltimore with sasha and greg...greg is dead. christine is back on long island and kim is somewhere in maryland writing about zoo animals...all of which is to say that there is no one near me.
and i'm living in rural suburban new jersey, with virtually no way to make new friends. i haven't gone anywhere for two weekends straight, because there's no where to go. they went and made the diner a smoke-free zone, so i can't even fall back on my old standby of take a book and sit at the counter with tea. there's something really wrong with the idea of a nonsmoking diner... i go to charlie brown's steakhouse/bar every thursday night, to see who's around. and i sit around and banter with the same acquaintances every week, with maybe a new face or two thrown in. drink a midoori sour or two (they taste like ecto cooler), and then go home to my cats.
i get like this every time the weather changes, but that doesn't make it easier to deal with. i just keep telling myself that it'll be different when i get back into college. things will change and at least i'll be busy so i won't notice the glaring lack of personal contact. and on the bright side, i'm going to see the weakerthans next monday, and i actually have a halloween party to go to. it's not that i'm completely isolated. it's just that i don't have any real friends.
i'm missing something i don't even have a name for. --beatpoetgrrl
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