“This season is a thief” I read online somewhere. A thief of daylight, of the sun, a thief of warmth, green. Even here in the deep South, with the seventy degree anomalies sprinkled in among the brisker winter days, I feel a bit desperate as the winter solstice comes on. It is dark before my workday is even close to done. I drive to work in the dark, drive home in the dark. I only see our house lit by sunlight on the weekends. Our holiday festivities are nothing but a dyke to hold back the flooding, pooling, insistent darkness. I am aching to have our Christmas lights up, our twinkling tree. Points of light in the black.
It is hard, then, to write here. I’m gloomy. I don’t like spreading gloom, but I haven’t done a good job of holding it back this season – worse than most years, and I’ve never been a big fan of winter. Our student loans remain an impossible burden. The baby won’t sleep through the night. I’m heavily laden with responsibilities. There are no breaks. The weeks unspool, one long weary task after another, day after day of unbroken labor. The job is a break from the kids are a break from the job, but neither is a break. I need some friends, a circle of friends, with whom I can go see a movie on an afternoon, or invite over for wine – to whom I am not a mom or lawyer, for whom I am not responsible. But I’ve struggled to make any here. This place is not hospitable to new people. I have made what I think are friends, and then I see facebook posts of all of them out together on a girls’ night. I was not invited, am never invited. “We’ve been friends for ten years” their captions say, and what I read is “We don’t need anyone new, sorry!” This seat’s taken. They don’t exclude on purpose. They just . . . don’t think of me. The group is set, was set long ago. And beyond bringing them food when they lose colleagues (check, done!), inviting their kids for play-dates and birthdays and then chatting with the moms like my life depends on it (check! check!), asking them to carve pumpkins together, set up a lemonade stand together, carpool sometimes so we can each have a morning break (no thanks, they say, I’m set!), running into them in town and asking them to lunch (check! and they took a rain check), I’m not sure how to break in. This is not a very mobile place (pardon the pun, those of you who know where I live). Everyone here is born-and-raised-and-never-left-and-ain’t-leavin’. There is no room for me in a group that’s known each other since high school or even long before.
See what I mean? Gloomy.
There are bright spots – metaphorical Christmas twinkle lights in my somewhat lonely days. A trip to Charleston with the Professor – I have some snapshot memories of the trip in a draft post that I’ll maybe finish one of these days. A special Thanksgiving with family, spending the day “helping” smoke a turkey on the back porch, beer or bloody Mary in hand. A two year old sassing nonsense baby noise at my ten month old for making off with her toys. A great game of football. We have all the little holiday joys to look forward to – advent wreaths, breakfast with Santa, looking at lights, the cookies-and-milk-and-carols-by-the-fire at our local nature center/lodge. These are precious moments and I do enjoy them.
But overall I feel the lack of a close-knit group. It’s been this military brat’s perennial longing – to be known, familiar, and it cuts especially keen when the kids are so small and needy. As another blogger once put it – I want to be able to view the elementary schools’ written demand for a 5-person-long emergency contact list, and not break out in hives wondering who on earth I could put even in the first slot, let alone the second, third, fourth, fifth. (I end up putting my secretary and paralegal, because they could find me. Then I put the children’s grandmothers and grandfathers and hope they are never needed urgently, as each are a 7+ hour drive away).
I’m weighed down by lack of sleep or exercise, by the dark, by the very intense job and the merciless loans and the lack of local support for my tiny, endlessly needy boys. I wanted to post about gratitude and thankfulness at Thanksgiving, about Charleston, about Craig in all his silly, busy 10 month old glory and Liam’s cleverness and Jack’s sweetness. But it’s all blocked up behind these blacker feelings.
So I spill them out here. Maybe they’ll be gone or mitigated, now that I’ve put pen to page (metaphorically speaking). It’s not really my bag to put forth a miserable face for “my public.” But I’ve got to be honest – this thieving season has stolen a bit of my optimism, and I am anxious for it to come back. So I’m willing to expose a little sorrow, in the hopes that sharing it here clears the way for a little more light.
Ugh. I’m sorry. You captured the difficulties of not having a group so well and it hurts. Fort Worth is the first place we’ve lived where I wasn’t in school with a bunch of people all looking for friends or we hadn’t gone to college here and had a bunch of friends who stuck around from that. It’s tight knit and no one leaves. Luckily it does have that random regional office of the federal govt that forces people to move here and we’re all friends with each other. I’ve been very lucky with my colleagues, but I literally have no other close friends and all the school moms know each other and have since college or before. We’re friendly, but as you said, they don’t think of me, and because they’ve never needed to be thought of, I’m sure they assume I don’t need them to either. But without my work friends (all of whom started a few weeks/months after me, so I had glimpses of what could be), I’d be lost. I’m sorry that it’s hard, and my mom is on our emergency contact list too (and I only had to think of 3; cannot imagine what I’d do with 5!).
It IS the season that brings gloom. After all, we’re really designed to eat and store up a bunch of fat so we can sleep whenever it’s dark until spring. Yes, hibernation! But collectively we don’t do it and then wonder why we’re depressed. It is the season to be depressed, to sleep, sleep, sleep. On the Navy cruised the expression was: “Eat until you’re sleepy, sleep until you’re hungry.” Since collectively we’ve decided to ignore nature and trek on with artificial light, and work, and kids, here are some things to help:
1. Grow some indoor things like potato eyes in a glass of water, parsley in a pot, and other life experiments from elementary school. It is not just for science that teachers do that, it lifts the spirit to see things growing. A harbinger of spring!
2. Use bright (not like the screwy fluorescents) lights. Light can lift you out of “Seasonal Affective Disorder” which is nothing more than your circadian rhythms prepping you for hibernation.
3. Assert yourself with prospective friends, especially at church. They’re just doing what they know, and they don’t know you well enough yet. But beware, friends take time and effort too!
4. Take the time to draw pictures with Jack, show him your nifty tricks from your elementary years. He’ll appreciate it and you will too.
5. Be patient, this too shall pass. Love you.
“They don’t exclude on purpose. They just . . . don’t think of me.”
^This – I could have written exactly this about all my supposed/potential girl friends. Military brat holdover indeed . . . . see ya soon? 🙂
Well, I just burst into tears. You’re so constantly eloquent about the things so many of us go through … thank you for sharing. I hope it does help.
No help? That I do think of you, all the time, from 2,193 miles away.
Oh my goodness, can I come visit you, like right now? I want to give you a hug! You should move here and be my friend. 🙁
Making new friends as a grown-up is really hard. Acquaintances and business contacts is easy, but finding someone you actually want to hang out with? Much harder. I only made one friend when I lived in Eastern Kentucky that year, the only other young, outsider professional woman there, I think.
Are you a member of the Junior League? I was told it’s a “great way to make friends.” I joined this year, and I made zero friends, but then I wasn’t trying for friends, I was actually trying for business contacts, and I’m becoming more and more antisocial in my old age. Meh. Some of it makes me barf a little, but overall it’s been good.
I’m so sorry, dear. I hate that your visits here are always so short. I would have been eager to share that movie or wine with you.
Oh, gosh, I totally get this! I am a married thirty-something 3L with two elementary-aged children. We live in a college town. I exist in a world of women who are in their forties and are married to university admin and faculty (and stay-at-home) or are twenty-something students (still supported by their parents). I commute to work, so making friends there hasn’t been easy, as the thought of driving in on the weekend is painful. It’s tough. I’ve tried inviting the moms over for playdates (kids dropped at the front door, ugh) and lunch, to no avail. I’m just not part of the club. And, yeah, emergency contact lists are the worst. Our family is 8+ hours away.
It bites so much. I’m sorry.
We live in a big city, have lived here for nearly 5 years, and I feel much the same way: can’t seem to meet people, and then when I do they’re kind and interesting and just do not have room in their lives for new friends in a real way. There’s no extra time, our schedules don’t match up, their needs are all filled by family and/or older friends. I am, at least, finally collecting some local acquaintances. But I can go weeks at a time without seeing a human being who knows my name, other than my children and husband. It’s incredibly strange and sometimes incredibly difficult.
I laughed about the emergency contact list thing. I just put my husband’s cell phone number, and … that’s it, they have to cope, we don’t have anyone else. Quite a little symbol, huh?
Hope the blues back off. I know you’re just so very tired, on top of everything else.