Adult friendships

I guess one of my biggest regrets in life at this point in time has been my failure to maintain meaningful friendships as an adult.

I do have a lot of friends, don’t get me wrong. However, whenever I have something very exciting to celebrate, the closest friend I have that I want to go out and get shit face with (that would go with me) lives in Chicago. Whenever I have a big fight with my hubby, and I’m not sure if it would continue to work, the only friend I could call to talk me off that ledge lives 14 time zones away. Whenever I reached out to my friends of color, there were always bigger problems, worse racism, and more depressed situations. Whenever I want to get advice from a queer mentor, he is on a cruise somewhere, and his husband hates me. Whenever I need career advice, it takes 3-6 months to meet up with people whose advice I would consider useful. Whenever we want to play board games, or computer games, or just hang out and chit chat with someone, it would take about 3 months to schedule.

My husband often said, “It’s just adulting. People are busy”. I often blame it on the fact that I move around so much. Yet, I have lived here for 14 years now. To be honest with you, I often get depressed on social media, not because of younger, hotter people (the Instagram teen girls effect), but because people go out and do things with their friends.

I work hard. I volunteer. I play (fun) games, I think. I genuinely care and support people. Why is it so hard to spend time with them?

I don’t know what is sadder. This fact. Or the fact that I am typing this out instead of talking to someone about it.

I could talk to my therapist. But I feel sad because I have to pay someone who is not my friend to talk about my lack of friends.

Is this the male loneliness pandemic that they are talking about? Should I start listening to right-wing extremist podcasts? Just kidding. Those incels have no friends either.

I don’t know. Talking to the void of the internet helped. Perhaps. I’m too sad to type this into AI so that some programming code can fake understanding me.

Like some of my adult friends.