For a number of years now, I have been lamenting the fact that no one ever warns you how much harder it becomes to make new friends once you’re not in some kind of school anymore. Recently, though, I was thinking that it’s not harder, it’s that you’re not exposed to large swaths of new people anymore - you actually have to work at it, which somehow feels unfair (though isn’t, really.)
After college, I lived in a place where many of my friends were not that far away, and yet I disliked that all of my nearest and dearest were no longer just across the quad or down the street. Now, I think back on that time and would give anything to have that many friends living in the same town as me. Currently, the closest friends I have live an hour away in light traffic.
When I moved to D.C., it was because I had friends there. Only one of those people still lives in that city, and while I did make friends (almost all of whom were my co-workers) I never felt at home in D.C. Now I feel even less at home in a place where I have no friends at all, but I also have to take ownership over the fact that I haven’t made any.
The few times I have traveled over the past year, I saw friends and ached to have those people in my life more regularly (pandemic notwithstanding.) But there will never be a time in my life when I convince my friend from Stoke-on-Trent, and my friend in L.A. and my friends in Chicago, and my friend in Manchester to all move with me to, say, Albuquerque, NM. Also I think that would technically mean I was running a cult or a commune, neither of which appeals to me in the slightest.
We are only responsible for ourselves, which means if something is missing from our lives (or at least feels like it is) we have to make the effort to change that. I say to friends “there is no Liverpool supporters club where I live” and they say “then start one” and I say “but I have no friends here to start it with” and round and round we go. I think of things I would like to do where I could meet people, like take a class of some kind, and then I start to feel anxious about the money I am not making at the moment. I even have a dog now, but I live in a place where you either walk your dog down your own street, or you have to drive a ways to a place where dogs are allowed (as many parks and public areas do not allow pets.) “Get a dog so you can meet people” feels like such a lie in this environment.
At the beginning of every year, we make promises to ourselves that this year will be different, that this time there will be change. I can feel change coming, like the distant rumblings of a plane taking off, or a train crossing in the night. But I am also afraid that I will never make another change and that I have made all the friends I will ever have.
Perhaps I will continue to feel sad about not having friends where I live, and spending what little money I have to go and visit the friends who live somewhere else. Perhaps I will make new friends in an unexpected way. Perhaps I will build a time machine back to my early 20’s and whisper in my own, sleeping ear “this is not what it once was, but it is more than it will be.” I know that now.
To friends, wherever they may be.