Okay, so who remembers this song?
Ahh, 1992.
I dusted off this song and posted it here to make a point: What about my friends? More to the point – where the heck did they go?
Oh, that’s right. They are off living their lives. One is in New York, another is in Korea, a few more are in Chicago and Florida. As a die-hard Ohio girl, it does hurt to see people pack up and move away, off to new lives in exciting cities, and I still live 30 minutes from where I was born.
I’m not jealous of their lives – I’m happy with what I have – but I wonder if I’m missing something. I get this way every time a Sex and the City movie comes out, because I LOVED that show and its overall message about friendships. True friends accept you and put up with all your bull. They love you despite the fact that sometimes you’re….well, you. You have flaws. And they don’t care. That’s awesome.
I can count on one hand the actual friends I have within driving distance and how many do I see on a regular basis? Eh, maybe one or two. Day after day, it’s the same routine: wake up, get kids dressed, go to work, come home, dinner, storytime, baths, more work, then bed. I see the same three people every day.
I used to make plans with friends to hang out or go shopping or even go to dinner. But with money being tight and I’m feeling so guilty since I spend the majority of the day at work, I usually spend all my free time and money on my kids and doing things with the family.
Do I not have room in my life for friends anymore? But maybe the real question is – do I really miss it? I’m a loner by nature and I have so much on my plate that I can barely string two sentences together for my husband before I pass out each night. Am I too busy for friendship? What does that say about me?
I’d like to blame motherhood for my decline in friendship but really, it’s just life. People move, priorities change and nothing stays the same forever. I do have a number of good friends who support me in good and bad, but I just don’t see them as often as I like. I can work on that.
Has motherhood gotten in the way of your friendships? How do you work around it?
Tara, reading you’re post sounds just like me. My friends are now scattered, and I only have a couple very close true friends that live nearby, and I don’t even see them often. I can’t even say I see them regularly. I see my mom and my grandparents regularly. But really, thats always how I’ve been too. When I was 16 and 17, I spent most of my time with friends, but I grew up and realized we were doing things we shouldn’t have been doing and I became responsible…but they didn’t. So we drifted apart, and our lives are so much different from each other now. So, yes, motherhood, and just maturing in general, have changed my friendships, but thats the way life is supposed to be, I think. Constantly changing and evolving, and people grow apart and become closer to others. It just happens, its natural. But I’m a loner like you, Tara. Most of the people I hold closest in my heart are people I’ve never met and only converse with through the internet. Maybe thats strange of me…but thats just kind of how I work.
After reading your post I realized I’m also a LONER. I have a really large family who I see and speak with regularly. I have one friend I speak to every single day and our Face to Face Girl Time consists of her doing my hair and chatting in between the perm and the blow dryer.
I think a lot of mothers live a second life once the children are older and off to college. I know I went away to school and came home and didn’t recognize my mom. All because she had a Life finally for herself. So hold on DOLL your Second Life will be full of FUN and Enjoyable Memories the life you’ll have After the Kids are off making you proud!!!!! That’s all I dream of is my second life once my child is away in school. The vacations, the late night dinners ahhhhhhhh It’ll be so GREAT!!!
Funny this is a topic you had in mind… I spoke on this a few weeks ago… I posed the question ” The closer you get to 30 the less friends you have, is that true?”… I received alot of feed back from it and believe it or not most of the women that commented were already or near their 30’s and all went the true answer. Do you think it has alot to do with age? or do you just think its because you have started your own family?
Just checking to see if there’s an issue with the comments. Don’t mind me!
Let’s see if this goes through…
.-= Tara´s last blog ..What about your friends? =-.
Girl it is not just motherhood that makes you have fewer friends around. It’s age sometimes. the older you get, the smaller your circle of friends get. People grow (or not) and move in different directions. I have very few friends. As a matter of fact, this is a good reason for blogging. You can make great connections without the strings. Make sense?
.-= Sheliza´s last blog ..I am going all the way gray =-.
oooooooooooh! yes ma’am! once i got married and had baby, so many people dropped by the wayside. now, 95% of the people i see the most are mommy or married friends and i’m ok with that. for whatever reason, my life changes were too much for some to stick around for. altho i hung around thru bad boyfriends, new careers, depression and all kinds of other stuff…nothing says “different” like a husband and especially KIDS! but like i said, im soooooooo ok with that.
“Nothing says “different” like a husband and especially KIDS”. I hear you Pink Lady. I don’t have the husband, but baby automatically placed me on another level and baby automatically replaced some people in my life. My bff actaully once whined to me that she just wanted to hang out with “me”, not me and my daughter. I guess she had a hard time understanding that as a single mom, I now came as a package. My friend circle is basically my college mama friends because we just have more in common lifestyle wise. Lifestyle is a big one. I think friends should always make time to keep in touch, but like you said Tara, life happens.
I love this post … I am definitely a loner but at the same time Im not … I have a very small circle of really close friends 4 who I have known for 20+ years and 3 that I met in college … we are spread throughout florida, virginia, maryland soon to be ohio, philadelphia, pittsburgh and california. Although some of us have had children, some of us have gotten married, some of us only talk maybe once or twice a month I know that if any of us needed the other we would drop everything and go where we need to but on an everyday life we each have our own and we all are doing something. I use to think that I needed to be with and talk to a friend everyday in order for them to be true but as I have gotten older I love that when I call one of my girls that I havent spoken to in 3 or 4 months they know whats wrong just by the sound of my voice and I love that something in my spirit makes me think of one of them and before I know it an email, phone or text pops up from that exact person. So although we have grown apart I think we really have grown much closer … Hmmm … makes me wanna have a 6 way call … Talk to yall lata!
I feel the same way, and I don’t even have kids. It’s also a function of getting older and finishing school.
.-= Distributary´s last blog ..In and Of Ourselves =-.