Wednesday 18 December 2013

On friendship

I sat in the Wetherspoons at lunchtime eating my burger and looking about. It's newly opened in the 'town' and quite the talk of it. It's always full which always leads me to wonder where all these people used to go to drink and eat. Did they just stay at home?

My eye alights on one of the booths where there are 6 ladies in their 40s and 50s sat. Wine buckets are on the table, sharing platters in situ. They are all talking at once, several conversations overlapping and get periodically louder as excitement levels reach fever pitch.

It's not really the sight I want to see when I'm feeling so alone.

I wonder if that will be me in 10-20 year's time. Will I have made a tight group of friends by then (please god)? Will I still be friends with the people I'm friends with now?

I wonder where it all went wrong. I'm in the minority of people who are not still close to the people they went to school with. I'm not even that close any more with the people I went to university with (American Girl and American Boy in exception). It feels like it would be silly to blame anything else but me - I'm the only common thread. But then I get defensive. I could blame myself for not making an effort, but then others didn't make any either. Plus we're at the point where lives begin to drastically diverge - as people get married and have children I've watched the friendships they have slowly diminish - there's less time for friendships, and even less time for friendships where the other person doesn't have a baby and "can't understand what my life is like right now."

It must happen to others, I can't be the only one.

I wonder if I'll ever get to sit around that table with a group of gossipy friends.

And then I realise.

I do sit around a table every night with a group of gossipy friends. It's called the interwebs.

I show my face on Twitter every single day and more often than not pipe up in a conversation that's being had on there. I ask questions and offer up solutions. I exclaim with delight at photos of cats and share pictures of what I've had for tea that night. They're only the small things, but it's the small things that make a friendship - it's the random snippets of information that we share that give us an insight in to each other's lives.

It shouldn't really have come as a surprise that I've made a return to blogging. Because it's where a lot of my friendships now come from and are based on. I've been talking to some of you for years and years now, how weird is that? I tell you things I would never tell the people that I work with, or even some of my 'real life' friends.

'Real life'. That's a weird phrase isn't it. I've just gone back through this post and put quotation marks around each time I've mentioned it (hopefully). I still make the distinction to people when I talk about the people I know online. When I told people about going to Norbury Manor I got myself in a pickle trying to explain who I was going with when really I didn't need to. I just needed to say "I'm going away with some friends."

I couldn't have written an e-mail to my friends that contained within it the words that I wrote in my post last week. Even if I could have I wouldn't have experienced the plethora of comments and Tweets that I received. Sometimes it is about quantity and at a point where you're feeling quite alone, to realise that there are people out there is all you need to decide that maybe getting up in the morning won't be so bad after all.

And yes, of course, eventually, there will be new friends. I will get a car and I will be able to join the groups I would like to join and I will meet new people. And yes, I can try to rebuild and repair the cracks that have appeared in already existing friendships. But also I will make every effort to remember that some of the friends that have got me through this past year are you guys.

And I would like to thank you for that.

Here endeth the mush.

11 comments:

  1. I'm no longer friends with anyone I went to school with (and wouldn't want to be!), nor anyone I was at university with. The friend I've known since we were 18, who I was bridesmaid for, has started to drifty away (and I from her). I've often done the same thing - wondered why people don't stay in my life for long, and then realising that I'm the common thread! As a classic introvert, I actually find it a lot easier to make friends and sustain friendships online than in 'real' life.

    ReplyDelete
  2. You're really not in the minority when you say that you've not stayed friends with the people you were friends with at school- most people don't because they move on after leaving school etc and it's only those who don't go off to university, don't move away for life or jobs and have the same views on life that they had when they were in school, who do. So don't feel bad about that - it's natural when you think about it; how many people do you think haven't changed at all since they were 16, in terms of their views and outlook on the world around them? I'm sure almost everyone has. People change and it can be that which causes friends to drift apart, and others to drift together and it can feel really hard when you're seeing that happening and not able to do a thing to stop it.
    I'm glad that the internet is there in a way, because it has the power to bring so many people with shared interests together, depsite the distance, and makes you feel as though you aren't the only one with your particular interests, in the world!
    I'm glad you sound as though things are getting a little easier - positivity, my dear x

    ReplyDelete
  3. You are not in the minority. .
    I am not in touch with anyone from school and don't really know anyone who is.
    My work has always been unsocial and friends don't understand that.
    The best people live in my phone.
    They understand. They like similar things. They keep similar hours. They reply.
    And if they don't well that's ok.

    No pressure.

    Please don't compare to other people. The grass isn't greener xx

    ReplyDelete
  4. Never really replied to a blog but love reading them. Your last few entries have thoroughly struck a chord with me.So I'm not the only one who feels "it must be me, I'm the common thread". Wow! I am normal! Mrs sock you are right - don't compare. I sometimes think everyone else is doing x,y,z....why aren't I? Well it's usually cos it doesn't interest me! I have a few close friends, I'm a classic introvert but in a job that looks like you're confident but in fact I'm incredibly shy. Happy with my own company but also need to meet up with people. Phone mates - a lifeline. Txting one liners & funny thoughts preserve my sanity. I think you may have nudged a few of us on to feeling more ok about ourselves. I hope you get comfort from this. S xx

    ReplyDelete
  5. Never really replied to a blog but love reading them. Your last few entries have thoroughly struck a chord with me.So I'm not the only one who feels "it must be me, I'm the common thread". Wow! I am normal! Mrs sock you are right - don't compare. I sometimes think everyone else is doing x,y,z....why aren't I? Well it's usually cos it doesn't interest me! I have a few close friends, I'm a classic introvert but in a job that looks like you're confident but in fact I'm incredibly shy. Happy with my own company but also need to meet up with people. Phone mates - a lifeline. Txting one liners & funny thoughts preserve my sanity. I think you may have nudged a few of us on to feeling more ok about ourselves. I hope you get comfort from this. S xx

    ReplyDelete
  6. I always find it odd that so many people have friends still from their school days and home towns, not because I think it's a bad thing, but mostly because I just don't. I exchange happy birthday messages with less than a handful of people I've been to school with or lived in the vicinity of. I have one person I went to uni with that I choose to keep in touch with, because he's awesome, most people I came to meet, were not.

    Anyway, enough about me- glad the internet has provided you with something so awesome, for me (and I know it's different because I'm in a city and have better access but still...) the internet people I know have not only been freaking amazing on the internet, but provided me with a starting point for meeting new people off the internet. Stick with it if it makes you happy.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I have found that people come in and out of your life as you need them - and I have to come to this conclusion from the (grand old) age of 69. Gemma :-)

    ReplyDelete
  8. I feel the same about my friendships, time and life stuff has seen them dwindle. I 'speak' to people online via twitter and blogs so much more than I do in person these days.
    I hope you're feeling better about things.

    ReplyDelete
  9. For me personally, as grateful as I am for the wonderful people in my life, as I grow more and more I'm also becoming more and more selective about who I spend my time with. I can't be bothered to waste my time meeting with someone where I have to make all the effort, and then find all they can talk about is them. That's not to say that I don't mind listening, but a friendship is supposed to be about both giving and taking. And in a lovely way, I think we find that a lot in the blogging world. We find people who understand, that we probably never would have in the same way if blogging didn't exist. Exactly as you say, it's a comfort to know you're not alone and for some reason it is so much easier to write everything you feel on the internet instead of telling your friends on occasion.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I think I'm exactly the same. But then taking the long view, why should we be friends with people we were shunted into classrooms with? If you end up having tons in common with them then that's awesome but it's not that likely! I don't know how much of it is due to not being on Facebook but I'm not in touch with anyone from school except one girl who I ended up living with at uni. Even with the uni girls it's a case of Christmas and birthday cards and the occasional meet-up.

    I'm still good friends with 3 girls I met when I was 12 because we were all horsey obsessed but we're scattered all over the place now and it's the same with my best friends. They live hundreds of miles away and without the Internet they wouldn't be in my life. It's tempting to look at big groups of friends and think they have it perfect but I bet you people looked at us like that when we were Team Norbury! Just cos it doesn't happen in the traditional way doesn't make it any less of a friendship :)

    ReplyDelete
  11. It's true. I have a very small group of friends from school/sixth-form college who I see every few years, briefly. I have really one friend from uni who I see maybe two or three times a year. (Plus I have all Tim's friends from uni who are a huge group that we see similarly often and I guess after 11 years I'm allowed to call them my friends too.)

    But the people I see more often? They live locally, which none of those others do. I met them either through work or via the Internet. And it took a few years to think of them as friends, and a few more to become good friends. But we're there now. And some of them have kids, but when you live round the corner that's not a barrier to keeping in touch like it is when you're hours away.

    So thank goodness for the Internet, basically.

    ReplyDelete

Go on. Say something. You know you want to...