For the average person, is pretty easy to do.
We start getting groomed to be social when we are young.
We are taugh to share even if we don’t want too.
We are taught to let people fill up space in our lives , even when there’s no more room.
We are taught, that part of our validity is based on the amount of friends we have versus the quality of the relationships we have.
When we are young, our friendships consist of sleepovers and swapping Lisa Frank stickers. It consists of bike rides and Saturday morning cartoons.
As our youth fades and we enter that most disgusting part of our lives, pre-teen angst and puberty, friendships consist of trying to survive a small shit town, planning your escape routes, swearing you’ll stay friends forever, even though, you make a solid promise to yourself that you’d throw every single fucking person overboard if it means it will get you out of this burning hell you’ve lived in your whole life.
Then adulthood knocks on your door, you can ignore it all you want but he’s a persistent bastard like an unwanted salesman. Just banging and banging and banging away until you have no other choice to open the door, you walk through, half blinded by the sun in your eyes and you realize it isn’t as great as you thought it would be.
It’s hard.
Sometimes it down right sucks.
And once you catch your footing and find your small place in this big world, you look around and you realize your circle just got a whole lot smaller.
I have been extremely lucky in my life to have been smart enough to pick the friends, chosen family, that I had. Hand picked, by me, fueled by alcohol and drugs, sarcasm and music, filthy mouths, the pure stupidity to not know any better and the stubbornness to think we knew it all.
Many of these relationships helped forge the person that I have become.
Michael B. taught me how to place a bet and that even if you don’t talk everyday, a phone call is all it will take and some people are willing to drop everything just to help you out, rooting for all your victories and willing you pick you up when you’re low.
Mary showed me, it’s okay to be loud. You MUST be heard. No one I’d going to talk for you, you’ve got to do it yourself. She lives far away now. But when something big happens, she is still one of the first people that I think about or reach out too. It doesn’t matter what time, day or night, when I call, she answers and she is there.
Lianne, my dearest of chicken heads, taught me that it is okay to dance to the beat of your own drum even if it means the assholes you go to school with will pick on you and torture you. You know that girl, single handedly, let people think she was the weird girl that thought she could talk to aliens. I’m pretty sure she was just screaming at the sky trying to get through her own shit.
Amie, oh Amie. Unconditional love. A shoulder to lean on even when her own life was so full of hurt and sorrow. I miss her every day. She is also the one person that showed me it was possible to love someone whole heartedly and that sometimes, for your own health, you need to step away. There are regrets, which I don’t usually have. There is also a bunch of what-ifs and guilt that I carry with me EVERY SINGLE DAY. But I know I must heal and I must get through this and that is a lesson she is still teaching me now even though she is no longer here. I miss her.
Mikey. That one stings too. I used to like to think I was the mother hen of the group and in some ways I was. However, now with some time and retrospect, I see it was him that was keeping me safe and out of my own way. Alot of times he did it and I didn’t even notice until he wasn’t there anymore.
There are two hollowed, hardened spaces in my heart where I hold them. It hurts and it’s raw, still, after all this time but it’s the proof that they were, indeed, a part of my universe and all of it’s beautiful destruction.
Christopher. Christopher and I are a lot a like. I’ve always appreciated his friendship because of his blunt and sometimes brutally honest responses. I appreciate that in a world of fake people. He seems hard on the surface but he really is one of the kindest, sweetest souls I have ever known. Even if he doesn’t always realize it. He would give you the shirt off of his back and even though it may not always seem it to people on the outside, he really is one of the most patient people I have even been around.
I met Kara my Freshmen year of high school. I was not looking to make any new friends, I was an angry teen who wanted nothing more then loud music , chronic and Newports. Our high school lives were filled with all-nighters, liquor filled weekends at night clubs, heartbreaks, long talks and lots if laughs which progressed into graduations, marriage, pregnancies. From our youth when we had weekends that we didn’t sleep that turned into knowing, if I call her after 8 I probably won’t get her because she will be sleeping to and adventures that led to nowhere turned into Sunday farm stand shenanigans. It’s hard to really pin point what I have learned from Kara. It has been a lot. Over 20 years of friendship tends to do that. I guess, if I had to really pick something, it would be, that some people always have open arms, even if it means people will take advantage of that. She is the most giving person I know and I have seen many people abuse that. She is stronger then she realizes and I’ve enjoyed having a front row seat.
I have maintained relationships with all of these people, in some shape or form. But sometimes, time and space, make it more difficult to get together for dinners or late night laughs. And in all cases when I get a chance to spend time with them, I do.
I would have we never imagined a year ago, even six months ago, all the twists and turns life woukd have taken. It seems like any time I get any kind of steady footing, an earthquake rips through causing, what I usually think looks like chaos and devastation. Once I brace myself and start clearing debris, once I start to pick up the pieces, I usually find what I was looking for even if it looks different from what I thought I lost.
I’ve had many long and meaningful relationships in my life.
I’ve also had some that were nothing but earthquakes, leaving me beat up and finding my footing all over again.
There are certain people I thought wod be in my life forever, now they are not.
There have also been people that, regardless of how many times they have showed their true colors, I seemed to somehow be color blind.
There have been people that I have trusted too much of, I’ve given too much of my energy and time too and I haven’t realized it until I have been on the outside looking in.
As life has changed, yet again and as this year keeps chugging along, I have had to learn a few new life lessons.
After having to become a shut in because of a global pandemic, I must profess, I like people more then I originally thought.
Most people, are meant to come in and out of our lives. Even if they are family, blood or not.
If I am being honest, I have given too much of myself in certain relationships which has caused neglect in other relationships in my life.
I have let my personal needs and wants, my time and energy go into relationships that I let take too much of my life and too much if my heart not allowing room for much else.
So now, I find myself, yet again, with unsteady footing, trying to figure out which road I should turn down now.
It is time to maybe make some new friends.
I wonder how someone does that when life has left you jaded and you a person, such as myself, is too untrusting, too honest that most people find you brash or you unkind.
I long for the kinds of friendships we had in our youth.
Laughing uncontrollably on the floor at 2 in the morning, leaving for adventures but never really knowing where we were going. Passing notes in the hallway, torturing each other’s siblings. Having dance parties in the woods and tossing the beer and running when the 5-0 show up. When we were wild and untamed, like feral beasts, hair unkempt with flowers tucked behind our ears and 10 different colors of nail polish on each finger. When we knew everything but were also delusional enough to think the world was at our fingertips.
Maybe, when these kinds of friendships end, it hurts a little more because it is just another reminder that our youth is slipping between our fingers and what was once so prevalent and in the now, is just another faded memory.
Making new friends as an adult is different. It is exhausting. For me, it means having to a full disclosure that if you are faint at heart, at all, I may not be the person you want to be around.
I’m not even sure I know how to make friends anymore.
I will not share my Reese Buttercups with you.
No, you can not change the song on my fucking radio.
I don’t care of you think bright pink shoes are not fitting for someone my age.
And yes, I think it is completely acceptable to say “fuck” evey other word or call someone a douchebag because they bumped into my shopping cart with theirs.
So what does this mean for making new friends?
It doesn’t look good. The probability is slim to none. But, maybe, just maybe, I’m a little more hopeful and a little more willing to entertain that idea.
Inside Gigi's World 
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