I'm kind of in a strange place in my life right now.
I haven't been a truly social person since I left college and moved to a new town for a new job... over three years ago. I made new friends, I suppose you could call them that, at this new job, but I never got out on my own to make friends outside of the workplace. I'm not one to go to bars and clubs and I don't have a lot of money so I never had much of a social calendar. I would pretty much drive home to my parents house every weekend to hang out with my family. This left me with a pretty large void where I used to have friends.
I met a guy through one of my brothers and we started to hang out, but neither of us ever expected or anticipated a serious relationship to develop. We were reckless together and several months later while he was on a trip out of the country for an indefinite period of time, I found out I was three months pregnant. After a period of seemingly unending drama, he came back to The States and we moved in together. My life melded into his. His interests became my interests and his friends became my friends. I brought absolutely nothing to our relationship except for my ever expanding belly.
Life was fine for a few months after Olive arrived. We have great families and we had friends who we enjoyed spending time with. We had our struggles, but everything was relatively peachy.
Then, after some very serious, very scary events late last Summer, my romantic relationship with Olive's dad ended. In the process I lost just about every person that I'd considered a friend.
I felt really awful about losing one of those friends in particular. I felt like I was judged a bit too harshly and unfairly by that person. Even now, when that person makes me feel like absolute crap about myself, I still mourn for our former friendship harder than I've ever mourned for a relationship.
I know I'm having such a hard time letting that friendship go because I am really and truly lonely. Lonelier than I've ever felt. Sure, I have people like my parents, my coworkers, and sometime you guys, who I interact with on a regular basis, but I don't have anyone that I consider an honest-to-god-friend. No person whom I call or text daily or hangout with regularly. No one.
I feel like I don't have time to meet new people. I work and live in two completely different cities. Four days a week, I commute 45 minutes one-way to work. Have I mentioned that I work the night shift? So I leave my house around 3:30 pm in order to make it to work before my shift officially begins at 5 pm. I work 12 hours until 5 am. I drive home 45 minutes then crash and do my best to sleep until I have to get up and get ready to do it all again. When I wake up on Wednesdays, I get to go pick up Olive from her Dad's house. We get to hang out until Saturday afternoon when I have to take her back so I can get ready to start my work week again. I don't want to sacrifice any of the small amount of time that I get to spend with my daughter outside of work.
I also feel like I don't have much of an opportunity to meet new people. I live in the smallest of small towns where there are no real places to go out and meet people. There are few people my age range left in my hometown. I don't feel like I have much in common with the people here anyway. I'm not trying to sound snobby, but I just don't agree with most people here politically, religiously, or morally.
Both of these challenges coupled with my growing loss of social skills keeps me at loner status. I'm trying so hard to remain positive and look at all of the good things I have going for me, but it's hard when you don't have anyone to share the good things with.
I never had issues with social skills growing up. I was never "popular" in school, but I was one of the people who talked to most everyone and didn't really identify with one clique. I'd always enjoyed meeting new people. I was outgoing and pretty unreserved. Lately, social situations make me feel anxious. I've found myself trying to do anything just to blend in. When did I lose the essence of who I am? Why? How? Am I just going through a phase or is this a permanent shift in my personality? Will this loneliness ever pass? How can I come to terms with my situation?
For now, I'll just put my happy face back on. This has been a rare slip in the armor. Much love to you readers. Have a wonderful day.
(sorry for any typos, this was published with the Blogger app, so everything was hammered out on my phone, which has a mind of its own.)
