i come from a land far far away from where I live. And where I live is a small town with a big town dream.
I arrived here at 23, married.
I made zero friends. Not because I am putrid but because everybody already has their friends down here. And those they aren’t friends with are family or people they went to school with.
More than one person said to me: oh, I’m not looking for friends, I’ve already got the ones I want.
Which I thought was just plain stupid. And very shortsighted.
Unless no one ever moves anywhere else (which does happen here far too much) friends come and go and come back again.
That’s the beauty of friendship.
And the nature of your friendship with even just one person can alter and change and grow and explode. The power can shift, the degree of need can agitate from one side to the other.
I existed here for about 15 years without any real friends. Partly it was small-townitis as previously described and partly the controlling and introverted relationships I got into.
But about five years ago I hanged jobs and started to find My People. The ones who genuinely got ‘jokes’. The ones who were interested in big questions and politics rather than what was on tv last night (unless it was a leadership debate), and the ones who cared how I was when I wasn’t in the office with them.
Those friends made me stronger: finding them is the reason I’ve made the Good and Hard decisions I’ve made in the past four years.
1000 days 