That book kind of breaks my heart. That poor bird spends the whole book looking for his Mom that he can't find. Thank God he finds her in the end or I'd be a hot mess of insanity, but still, he spends the whole book looking.
At one point, I think near the cat, I'm all like "just let him stay with you for the love!". But the cat doesn't. And he keeps looking.
The poor bird just doesn't fit in anywhere.
Making friends as an adult kind of makes me feel like that poor bird. Like I'm walking from group to group, just looking for someone that will accept me. It sucks sometimes.
See in high school, it's very easy to find your "group". For me, I was an athlete. My good friends were all athletes of some sort. We all knew about long practices and competition and there was an automatic common bond. For some reason, even though we didn't have everything in common, the love of a sport brought us together and kept us together. Then I was also pretty smart (what had happened?!) and so I fit in immediately with the "smart crowd". We weren't sitting around quoting Dickinson or anything, but we all had advanced classes which lead to things in common and.. friendships.
You were in class for hours a day followed by practice and what not and there was plenty of time to form said friendships. I mean, what else could you do for forty five minutes in class but talk?
Ha.
It's different now. There aren't classes and lunch breaks. There's Little Gym and such but you spend most of that time wrangling your crazy child.
No? Just me? Awesome.
Sometimes I meet a group of awesome women and I just want to holler "please be my friend!", but I don't. Because that would be lame. And weird. But what's the next step?? I just want to give them my Facebook, phone number,
It's sad.
I will say, that the friendships I have made in my adult life are way more meaningful than most I had in high school. And for that I am so thankful. Because the friends I do have? They are amazing and so special to me.
I'm also a huge fan of my blog and Twitter pals. Now if I could just get all of you to move onto my block that would be fantastic.
19 comments:
I totally know how you feel. I had close friends in high school and college, but I was also, most of the time, at least, in a relationship. Yeah, I was that girl. I didn't "choose" my boyfriend over my girlfriends, but it was always hard to balance both for me because my boyfriends weren't necessarily friends with the other girls boyfriends.
As an adult, we've moved several times and with the hubby's job, we will keep moving. Throw in being a mom and then you start feeling really isolated.
I know what you mean about meeting new friends. You wanna latch on and say "hey, be my friend!" I am not above facebook stalking out new friends.
Twitter and blogging helps, but you're right, wish we were around the corner!!!
xxoo
Soooo true!!!! I am so much more grateful too for the friendships I have now!! They mean more to me and my friends now are like my family!!
Totally. A) I love that book, but you're right. It damn near breaks my heart every time!
b) It's like my hubs says: you have a lot of friends...it's just that none of them live near you! That's the hard part. Not having a local group of gal pals. I'm struggling with that too.
Oh we are big fans of that book. I agree with you about finding friends. I think the key is just to put yourself out there if you meet someone who you might click with.
Ask to have a playdate or go for coffee. Be yourself. If it doesn't work with that person try someone else.
P.S I am a new follower and I have a 3 year old E. Love your blog.
I completely agree with this post. I am fortunate to have so many of my close highschool/college friends living here in my same city, but most of them aren't even married yet, let alone with kids! It makes it so much harder for us to maintain the same kind of friendship. Let me know if you figure this out. I have yet to.
Oh girl, isn't that the truth. How amazing it would be if all us blog/twitters peeps ALL lived in the same area!!! Now if there were a way to make that happen, ha! Hang in there! Love ya!!
I totally understand how you feel. Even as a military spouse, you'd think it would be easy to find similar people to befriend, but tell someone you work full-time and aren't staying home with your kid and you get "the look". (You know, the one that is a mix of judgement and pity?! Ha)
I think majority of us feel this way...so maybe the new approach needs to be to assume the other mom is just as nervous or insecure about coming off as desperate for a connection and just go for it!
I don't know the answer, but if you figure it out, let us all know! :)
I feel this way, too sometimes. Making friends with other women is just plain difficult. To be honest, I think my problem is I have no tolerance for drama or women who feel the need to "control" the friendship if you know what I mean. Sigh. Oh well, the friends I do have are pretty amazing. I guess that's what makes them so special, right?
I so agree. Making friends as an adult is tough work and not for the faint of heart. More often than not I give up. It's wrong. I admit. But gosh it's exhausting.
Joe loves that book! It's so cute and I love the last page where he's talking to his mother :-)
I know what you mean about finding new friends. As far as the next step, I would say go ahead and give them your phone number/FB/email/whatever. I can remember one particularly lonely time where I felt like I didn't know anyone, was trying to hang out with other women but couldn't get in w/ the group, and finally in a moment of desperation told one of them, "I need you to hang out with me!" She was surprised and later told me that I'd always seemed to have it so put together, like I must have lots of friends and so she didn't think to ever do anything with me (we're good friends now). I thought that was CRAZY, but it made me realize that sometimes people really can't tell. I know that it's hard to manage what with work and having a child and finding time to spend with your husband, but I say just go for it and give it a shot :-) And let us know what happens!
I totally feel what you are saying. I've never been one to make friends easily. Now that I'm a SAHM it seems so important to have friends and support around. It's just 100x harder to find those people. Ugh.
I hear ya! We need a HUGE blogging community... literally a community :)
Love your blog! Newest follower :)
Word to your mother. I hold we need an internet dating sight to pick up friends.
Alright, I'm moving cause I need friends too! It's sooo hard- harder than dating was. High school was great for me for the reasons you mentioned but making friends now is a challenge. There should be sleepaway camps or homeroom or something to make new friendships. No? Well, something!
Okay, that's it, we have to move closer. :)
We have a book similar to that where a bird gets adopted by a bear (so obviously we love that, haha) but it made me and my hubs sad the first several times we read it.
I find it's sooooo much harder to even work on forming good relationships at this stage in life. Like you said, when you're at Little Gym you're busy with E. If you do find a potential friend, you're fighting to align schedules to even have a play date. I don't have any family near us, but I feel like so many do and that usually complicates their schedule even more. Yep, hard stuff. But I am glad to have met some fabulous ladies through blogging and twitter. We were sad you couldn't make it last night but I def understand that you had been on the road a ton.
Ok, didn't mean to leave you a novel there :)
I agree! It is hard to form friendships in this stage of life! We have "friends" but not real friends- the kind you can call anytime to come over or go out to eat with.
We had this discussion in our life group last week to find out that everyone felt the same exact way- thats 20 couples who felt like they didn't have any or many good friends. We consciously started planning one thing a week (something small every Sunday night where kids are welcome too). It has really helped so far to make us strengthen our relationships.
I like that that you say {as|like} my friend thanks
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