I was thinking this morning about friendship. See, I've moved recently and haven't yet developed any close friends here. Certainly, I've got my gorgeous wife. We share everything.. from the deep, introspective yaks long into the night.. to our wacky sense of humor and penchant for running up and down the hall. I can make her laugh SO hard... she is ticklish and gets hiccups easily, which only winds me up more!! ( I've been tickling her neck lately. She tucks her chin so quickly, so fetchingly for a little butchly thing! Her newest pet name is Yertl the Turtle. Ohhhh, I love my darling girl! It's a wonder she lets me live sometimes... I torment her so.)
And we've got lots of good people around us, in her VERY large family. An original Liverpool family with seven siblings grew to ten and more recently twelve. And they're close, looking after eachother. I LIKE being a part of that... even with it's inherent, 'You need a ride?/All right, be right there' factor.
But what about those people who we call our personal friends? I do have one such treasure, in Sus, my best friend back in the States. I've known her since my sophomore year in high school... but do we only get one of those kind of friends? I've made others who've come and gone, not in ugly ways, just drifted off... through my kids and their assorted outside interests. I snatched a few for myself through my jobs and some of the ex's outside interests.
But I'm new here. Meeting these people takes time. You sort of scoop eachother out of the planktonous masses of folks who manage to swirl through our lives in a regular manner.
I've been at a local community college for two years. I met and came to really enjoy the company of Mark and Claire, among others.. but they are 18 to what.. 24/26 years old. LOL.. I went into the city clubbing with them once. I kept up, but it was mad! The age gap, only because of experience, could be a drift factor if we don't put out the effort...
I'll be back in a minute. I really want that smoke. If it takes longer than a minute, assume I got lost again on my way back in ;P
*time warp* ... picture garth doing the wavy-hand motions... LOL. I saw the 'save as draft' button on my way out, thereby putting off the login/ start posting headaches!
My work-mates at the grocery store are mostly either again, college age kids or older married women... who don't know I'm gay. Dan, who I went to school with, does know, along with the security guard.. who turns out to have known my wife's family... lol. Perhaps others do as well... but it's proving to be a bit of a hurdle for me as I get to know people there. Customers ask questions at finding my American accent deep in the boroughs 'twixt dock and train track... In truth I know it's bound to be a time factor. Who do you let in?
But in amassing time, an obvious start date leads you to the displacement factor. We mark time by our moves... 'when I lived here' . In my early years, I moved many times. When we weren't changing homes, I was changing schools. Church schools to public to progressive/gifted, then jr high and high school. Another high school when we moved north to the boonies. It was nuts. No wonder I was so quiet and introspective. But after a while, I began to feel secure enough - perhaps in knowing my 'surroundings', to put myself out there and make my own friends.
I believe this must be true of others who move to completely new places, new jobs. We are starting over. We create our circles of friends in the appreciation of personality or common interests. Appreciate in it's mathematical sense is to grow or increase, accumulation... not just enjoying a person, but experiencing their company on ENOUGH occasions to know you like them. With enough accumulation, I'll get there.
It's not killing me or anything. But it can contribute to the blues sometimes. I count among my largest blessings, the fact that my gorgeous wife understands. She tells me to enjoy myself out there in the rest of my world, and to have patience. It's really all I can do.
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