One of the things we constantly heard during middle school (aside from the fact that we would need to use cursive for the rest of our life. I listened! But I’m pretty sure our teachers were dirty liars) is that we rarely keep our middle school friendships by the time we become adults. In some ways they were right. I can’t name half the people who went to my 8th grade birthday party. But in other ways, I feel like my group of middle school friends simply became my group of close high school friends. Either way, friends come and go, and I think a part of our life is being able to accept that kind of pleasant (and unpleasant) change.
My life philosophy has always been that if something makes you unhappy, you cut it out of your life, whether it’s friendship relationships or relationship-relationships, because life is too short to deal with other peoples’ bullshit. But when it comes down to making these choices, I feel like they’re often much harder to do than they are to talk about.
I feel like there’s been a lot of unnecessary tension regarding my (and others’) leaving of our company, the kind of tension that feels like it’s actually breaking apart friendships. And I guess at my core I don’t understand why this tension needs to be there. To me, it’s always been important to have a strong divide between friends and work, largely because in college a majority of my friends were also my colleagues. But at work, I was their horribly bitchy boss, who constantly wrote nasty emails to prevent slacking and watched over their work with (a little too much) vigilance. However, drinking margaritas on the weekend, I became the friend who shared in our own mutual tech-related stupidity. There was a time and a place to deal with the tension and it was at the io, not at Geronimo’s. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m not against to combining these two environments, but I am opposed to them interfering with each other.
Perhaps this is just one of the shitty parts about being an adult in our twenties. These types of tensions do arise even when (I think) they’re entirely unnecessary. We can call it stress, tension of whatever, but isn’t the whole point to get past it? My friends who I am closest to are those who are able to share their worst moments with me, and with whom I’ve shared my worst moments, like crying so hard in Grand Central that I threw up all over my metro-north train, or getting lost in Park Slope without my cell phone. I feel like when we are at our worst, it’s really easy to start forgetting the people around us (A and I go weeks without talking when the stress of life gets too much for meaningful conversations), but isn’t that why we need to keep making the effort?
Things like this end up being one of the crappy parts about living abroad. People come and go constantly, because at the end of the day, many of us aren’t really sure why we are here in the first place (after a year, I’m still not quite sure myself) and we have to be okay with that. That’s just part of dealing with being an adult, right?
p.s. I’m experimenting with a newly updated layout, but I’m not sure if I like it or if I want to switch to a different theme. I’d love to hear your thoughts!
I have done that. I can take quite a lot, but there has come a point when I’ve just stopped bothering with “friends” where it’s been all one-way traffic. This is all down to “them” changing and becoming really unreasonable which, thinking about it now, seems to have been generally after big life events like births or weddings. I haven’t regretted standing back.
And the only thing I don’t like about your page is that black bar which snaps down covering the text as you scroll down.
Sorry about the delayed response! It’s been such a hectic wonderful few days being back home in the U.S.! I’m not sure how much the change was either of us, because I feel like while you and other people are changing, you don’t really know until it hits you right in the end, but it’s slowly diffusing.
I do want to try to figure out what to do about the black bar since it’s part of the theme, but I am considering switching it again as well.
I used to hang out with my friends a lot till I met my wife…from that point onwards I met with them less and less frequently and stopped going to bars (oe whatsoever) completly. In Finland I met up with my friends perhaps 2-3 times a year in the end, mostly at my place. Now here in Germany it continues however I have barely any contact with any from my schools. Only one guy I knew since kindergarten i meet from time to time and then another guy from swimming back in the day who has by chance also a son same age as our boy 🙂
Life is just ever changing and you will never be able to meet everybody es expectations. Sure I would love to meet more often with my friends but through this other things might suffer again so I stick with my status quo and be happy with it.
Thank you for the kind words! I just got back home so my internet situation has been a little hectic. I guess that is true.. as we get older and couple up, it becomes harder to get in touch with others and I’m also guilty of that. It’s nice that others share similar experiences though 🙂
I used to hang out with my friends a lot till I met my wife…from that point onwards I met with them less and less frequently and stopped going to bars (oe whatsoever) completly. In Finland I met up with my friends perhaps 2-3 times a year in the end, mostly at my place. Now here in Germany it continues however I have barely any contact with any from my schools. Only one guy I knew since kindergarten i meet from time to time and then another guy from swimming back in the day who has by chance also a son same age as our boy 🙂
Life is just ever changing and you will never be able to meet everybody es expectations. Sure I would love to meet more often with my friends but through this other things might suffer again so I stick with my status quo and be happy with it.
Thank you for the kind words! I just got back home so my internet situation has been a little hectic. I guess that is true.. as we get older and couple up, it becomes harder to get in touch with others and I’m also guilty of that. It’s nice that others share similar experiences though 🙂