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March 9, 2003 - I'll Be There For You
We are so tired of not having any friends. Technically, we have two in this city: Annie and Gwendolyn. And there's the nice couple we met from Boston - after we moved here, of course - and our friend Sandra is in Boston, too, and has promised to spend a weekend with us in the spring. Simon and Judith have come down to visit with their little girls. But we don't really feel close to anyone here. Our friends are scattered all over the country. We're headed back to Pittsburgh later this week to visit my in-laws, and all of Toby's friends who used to live there are gone. When I go home to Jerk Town, there's only Aurora there still. Our friends are in California, Washington, Oregon, Manhattan, Michigan. Toby and I will always be each other's best company, but having had no social life to speak of for the past five years is getting pretty depressing. Ê We've tried to meet people. The synagogue is a dead end - everyone is very nice and very old. The median age is probably about sixty, and I think we may be the only couple there under 35, maybe even under 40. I met a nice girl in my singing group, but she stopped coming after two rehearsals. I haven't made a new friend since 1998. (That was Bernard, of course.) The last friend I made before that was Toby, in 1995. These facts make me equally angry and sad. I can't say that I'm lonely exactly, but I went nearly all of my twenties without a close confidante. My thirties are shaping up to be the same way, and I don't know what to do about it. If I had to make a choice between being single and having lots of good friends or being married and having no friends ... not much of a difficulty there. But is it too much to expect to have both? Ê Of course, now that I have A Child, I can participate in various Child-Centric activities and thereby meet other women who will be kind to my face but will be secretly critical of my child and my parenting methods. Hurrah! What a lovely basis for friendship! And even if I do meet someone that I like, I'll have to put up with her kid. Having a child of my own has by no means softened my general disgust with other people's brats. Our friends with kids come over and the kids are incredibly, deliberately messy, incredibly rude, and generally treat my house like their own personal toybox. I won't name names but the last time one of our friends came over with her kid - and this kid, mind you, was five, certainly old enough to know better - her mother had to tell her three times not to open the door of our china cabinet. I had to put away everything that was lying around in the living room before they came over, and when this kid got bored and whiny I felt obligated to try to entertain her so that she didn't return to the dining room to attack my $150-a-place-setting wedding china. Ê How do you meet people? We don't work outside the home. Even before Asha was born, we weren't going to clubs or bars. Our synagogue is a dead end. My singing group is a dead end. Of course, we'll probably make friends with a whole bunch of wonderful people - right before we end up having to move. I never expected this to be such a lonely time in my life. |
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