Friendships
I’ve been thinking about friendship today and loneliness. I have many people that I consider friends. The would, and have, dropped everything to come help me in a time of need. I would, and have, dropped everything to help them. I am richly blessed to know so many good people. Yet most weeks I don’t see or speak to any of my friends who don’t live in my house. I tweet, comment, and generally interact online with all sorts of lovely people on a daily basis, but that is not the same. I attend church every week, but often I sit by myself and only engage in a few sentences here and there with my neighbors. I used to have a group of friends who gathered every other week for a girl’s night, but then half of them moved further away and the rest of us had our lives shift. We don’t meet anymore. For several years I had regular handwritten correspondence with some of my friends, but that dried up this year too. I stopped having the energy to reply.
I didn’t notice as all of this was happening. I’ve been turned inward this year; very focused on family, business, and emotions here in my house. But somehow I’ve come to a place where my in-person interactions with friends have dwindled to scattered lunch appointments. I did it to myself. Some of it was necessary because I had to conserve my resources of energy. But I’d like next year to be different. I’d like to be around friends more often. I just need to remember how that works and how I make it happen.