kids make you lonely

[metaphortunate]

You know, mostly people did tell me that it was going to be exactly this hard. I can't pretend I wasn't warned. But there's just one thing that I don't think anybody mentioned? I constantly have that "all my friends are out having fun without me" feeling. And the reason is because y'all ARE. You post pictures about it! And I see these pictures and go "oh…they were here and they didn't invite me…and if they had, what day was that, that was…yeah, no way I could have gone…they probably guessed that…I can't really argue."

Or, you know, you DO ask me, and I can't go, and then you go out and have fun without me, and then I do the sad puppy eyes when looking at your pictures later.

Argh, it's not that I am not socializing enough! I have as much social time as I can handle and maybe just a bit more. I just have a lot of great friends who do really fun things, okay? I wish I got to see you more, it's just that I would need a time turner.

Comments

[laurashapiro]

I miss you! ♥

[metaphortunate]

I am excited about WTNV! \o/

[laurashapiro]

Me too! But it seems like I should see you more than once every 6 months.

[jae]

For what it's worth, your friends having kids also can make you lonely (and, in my experience, almost inevitably does). And you don't even get any control over whether or not it happens. :/

-J

[metaphortunate]

I can see that. :/

[the_rck]

I know that the first five or six years with my daughter were pretty hard that way. I lost one friend who thought I was being hostile when she and her husband came over to play games with my husband, and well... I was sitting in the next room, supervising a small child and making sure she got fed and into bed and everything was ready for the next day, and a lot of the time I was in a lot of physical pain, too. I've never figured out exactly what she expected me to do, possibly come into the room where they were playing and hang out with them, leaving my daughter to do who knows what. Not that I wasn't tempted...

That friend has an almost two year old now, and I think she's reconsidered. At any rate, she's willing to talk to me again.

[metaphortunate]

I am sorry your friend was so aggressively thoughtless! you are nice if you are willing to talk to HER again.

[the_rck]

Well, we've been friends since college. We met in 1986 when we both went to a play a long way away from our dorm and walked back together after so that neither of us had to be alone in the dark. We'd seen each other around but hadn't ever introduced ourselves before. She stood up in our wedding, and we stood up at hers. That meant that there were decades of history before the problem and that our husbands were still friends.

I think it just never occurred to her that having a small child completely alters one's priorities. At this point, her daughter is about 23 months, so she's been dealing with the very intensive parenting stuff. They adopted a safe surrender baby with pretty much no notice, just a phone call saying, "There's a baby. You can take her home tomorrow if you want her." So her life got upended without the more usual months of planning and figuring things out. They'd been trying to adopt for years, but having it suddenly actually happen, well.

[giandujakiss]

Not having kids makes you lonely. You get to my age *ahem* and all your friends have young kids, which means (1) they're never free and (2) their experiences/conversation topics are now wildly divergent from yours

[metaphortunate]

Yeah, it is true that even apart from the sheer time, the interests diverge too. :/

I feel like the internet is saving us all.

[xtina]

This is why I made a Slack group of friends of ours. Omg I was so lonely just sitting at home, by myself, with Twitter to keep me company.

(It's not exactly the same because me and going out don't get along, but similar.)

[thistleingrey]

I have the horrible sense that I'd use a time turner to take naps, which . . . I'd just die sooner, I guess? Not sure how the tradeoffs work out.

[metaphortunate]

Die sooner, but naps....yes. Yes, okay.

[azurelunatic]

*brews virtual tea*

[metaphortunate]

Thank you. :)