I feel alone

I know I'm not...but I feel alone. This might be because today I am in a pessimistic mood (girl hormone issues). Recently I've began to notice my friends and all the other friends they have other than me. Now I am not saying that I expect to be the only friend they will ever have but I'll admit I feel out of the loop. And it doesn't help being graduated while your other girlfriends are still in college. But it's not just that. Many of my friends are married and so they have new lives where they hang out with married couples and it just seems like the old things you used to enjoy (i.e single ladies night, sleepovers) just aren't much of an option.

To be honest I'm not sure what I expect to get out of this post (or what you will get out of it) besides an expression of excessive complaining. But I know this is common. There are the few of us who are lucky to have that group of besties we've had since middle school and then there are those who might have one or two besties that are luckily still around (that's me). Yet, we are all so busy that at times I question if I even have a steady, official best friend. So what do you do? Is this the moment when it's time to become your independent self where you can go eat at a restaurant alone? Or do you search for new friends?

Having friends is such a conundrum because you spend your life trying to have as many friends as you can, spend your time, money and energy trying to keep them but in the end you may end up with none of them. Your family is the one type of friend that never leaves (in most cases). So do you make your family your friend? Well in my situation (I am an only child), going to Vegas with your parents and bar hopping can only last so long, age 55 max. True, my boyfriend is my best friend but again, he can only take so much shopping and pmsing...

Now I can't keep writing this post without saying that yes, if I put more of a conscious effort to reach out to my friends and stay up late on weeknights (12am) I may not be feeling this way. Yet, have you ever heard the term out of sight out of mind? Well this is what happens after college. If you aren't on campus or at the sorority house or at weekends parties, people think you've died. I can't even count on both hands how many times I've come out of my dungeon to attend a party and 3 trillion people are like "oh my gosh I haven't seen you forever!! Where have you been?!" ....oh...so is this why you've started writing my obituary??

Luckily we have facebook and twitter to make us feel semi involved with the rest of the world, yet even that only goes so far. Example:

Friend #1: "Hey girl i miss your freakin face we need to catch up"
Friend #2: (extremely surprised and ecstatic) " oh my gosh I know!! Can we please do lunch or a girls' night asap?!"
Friend #1: "Yea I'm down lets do it next week!"
....[20 weeks later]....
Friend #1: "I miss you so much where have you been?!! Let's please do something!"

Yea you get the (exaggerated) picture. So anywho, if you've read this far (thank you), what do you think? What do we do when we reach that point in our lives when friends are important but are so hard to keep/find? Well I guess it's kind of like dating. It reminds me of the movie "I Love You, Man" where the main guy is getting married but has never had any close guy friends so he's in search of his best man. He ends up trying to meet guy friends at the gym, bars, etc. and puts in a hell of an effort to go out with his new man friend and spend a lot of time together.

 Sounds super silly but it is what it is. Once our friends are not readily available to us (tunnels connecting our houses) we are faced with the reality of actually "trying"! It's so hard, but if having a social life is important you've got to make it a priority, just like with anything else. If you want to be in shape you've gotta make time to go to the gym. So lo and behold...if we want something in life we've gotta go get it! It's the simple saying of "the phone works both ways!" Call them and MAKE them hang out with you haha, if it takes a few times of you taking the initiative first then so be it, they'll come around. And if they don't, damn flakes, then they aren't worthy of being your friend anyway :)