Best Friends - Part 2:

[Judging from the private responses to the previous post on friendship, I've apparently struck a nerve.  Here are more thoughts on friendship between adult women .... thoughts still not fully formed, still conclusion-less.  Would love to hear your feedback on this topic, especially if you have a different - or more fully developed - perspective!]

Turtle in a Social Whirl'd :

Once upon a time, a bright, curious, engaging little girl grew up to be a middle-aged woman who went to a retreat advertised as, well, a retreat: a time to get away, to be refreshed, to be quiet, to "let go of the need to have it all together". It was billed as being different from those other retreats, which were, well, actually conferences.

This middle-aged woman, mother of four, was looking forward to quiet. Refreshment. Letting go of perfection (or the striving for...). To being with like-minded women.

The venue was peaceful. The guest speaker was kind, and welcoming. The other women were genuine. And gregarious. And eager to hear each other's life stories. And exchange contact information. And refer to each other as “dear friend” on social media only hours after meeting for the first time ......

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I came to the retreat to actually retreat. I thought others had, too. I thought (silly me) that was the point.

I was wrong.

I didn't attend all the offered meetings, and workshops, and sing-around-the-campfires, and early-morning-yogas, and late-night-snacks. I wanted to. I just needed retreat more than I needed fifteen new best friends.

And so …. even though a few of the lovely women I met friended me immediately on social media, I soon noticed, after I went home (refreshed, I might add, despite feeling like a disappointment socially), that the “dear friend-ing” continued – nay, escalated – in earnest. Was there a prize? I began to wonder, for attaching yourself to the most new people? Did you get a discount at the next annual event if you got the most new followers? The most comments from previous attendees?

I still don't know. I slowly unfollowed most of my new “friends” as my feeling of fraudulence increased, since I wasn't actually in friendships with any of them.  There was no one-on-one, heart-to-heart, back-and-forth, outside of reading and occasionally commenting on social media posts. I prematurely decided that it was probably all just a facade, for all parties involved.

And then I saw a photo of several of them together. Together. In person! (One of them had been my roommate!!). The first thing I thought was not (God help me) “How lovely that they could all get together!”

Nope. The first thing I thought was - “I'm not there. I'm not with them. No one invited me. I'm not wanted.”

There it is. All the bright, curious, engaging little-girlness gives way to the ancient fear of not being wanted, lived out decades later, on a regular basis.

I confess that as I approach my fifth decade in life, I still occasionally wonder “How is this friendship stuff supposed to work, exactly?” What is it supposed to look like? Does everyone else have that One Person who texts them (or if they're really loved, calls!) whenever something good or bad happens, and who reciprocates in turn? Does everyone else have a friendship playbook except me? Did I miss a memo (or a facebook meme) somewhere?

In middle school, my physical coordination was rather behind the other kids', which, coupled with the fact that I'd been pushed ahead a grade in school, putting me even more behind coordination-wise, meant that I was usually chosen last for team sports.

Middle age felt just like that, today, when I saw that photo of the happy-without-me group of retreat women.

What's wrong with me now, I wondered? Being able to hit or kick the ball at the right time in the right way doesn't matter anymore, and I actually thought I was a pretty good friend. (More than one friend has told me just that, as it happens, so surely it's not arrogance to believe them?) 

 Maybe I'm just not that sort of friend, the kind you invite on a girls' road trip, or have over with your other friends, or pick up your phone to tell about the thing that just happened, or call to check up on when you haven't heard anything for awhile?

I don't know. I am in the dark. Playbook-less.

I have good friends (I thought) who tell me sometimes in the middle of our deep, intense, meaningful conversations that they can't talk to anyone else like this, about these kinds of things. So I apparently have some value as a friend. Sometimes. When it comes to being real about what really matters. But these friends do not tag me on their “best friend” posts. We don't take selfies together and commemorate our friendship in the public eye.

Maybe I'm not fun (or photogenic!) enough for those kind of friendships. (But just the other day I was with two friends laughing till we couldn't breathe or – a more immediate crisis – swallow the coffee in our mouths! Okay, granted, that would not have been photogenic!)

Or maybe I'm too quirky to want to hang out with too frequently, or too embarrassing to combine with other friends. Maybe I'm not a good mixer.

For whatever reason, I was not chosen, at that retreat, for anyone to get to know* in real life, beyond the artificially-structured time. In that small, intimate crowd of 30+ women, despite the fact that I enormously enjoyed getting to know some of them, sharing stories, talking about things that matter, somehow none of them “stuck” in a way that translated into friendship once the retreat had ended.

So I am left mystified.

Maybe if I gaze at that photo long enough, I'll find a clue ….
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*[It occurs to me as I type that phrase - “not chosen … for anyone to get to know” - that I also did not choose to get to know anyone at length once the retreat ended, either. I didn't attach myself to any of the apparently pre-formed groups there; I didn't pursue post-retreat closeness with anyone whose story I'd heard. So in a way, I participated in the not-choosing … by also not choosing. This is something for me to chew on. Something different, granted, from the left-out feeling that I'm not doing friendship “right” in general, in life, but still …. Perhaps there is more initiating that is my responsibility than I have previously acknowledged. And perhaps – there is just simply the fact that I prefer a slower pace than many today seem to …. and so I am literally left behind. I don't know. Do you?]