So I just moved from my hometown to a new place and to be honestly, it's a rather lonely time for me. My husband got a job 20 min from here and while the town is nice and our apartment is great, I do find myself with a lot of free time and nothing to do. Also facing the realization of how hard it is to make friends after college and especially in your 30s.
When in school, it's easy to have tons of friends because that environment encourages it. They have orientation and "get to know you" excercises and are always promoting clubs and events and this leads to the fact that most folks make their best friends in college. This is also probably where I should've tried harder to make more friends. I saved money by living at home. On one hand, it was nice to come home to a clean, quiet place where I didn't have to share a bathroom but on the other hand I may have cheated myself out of certain experiences that only come from communal college living. I still eventually made a couple of friends and kept pretty busy but also as someone who found the whole drinking partying scene a bit "immature" I often felt like I didn't truly fit in. Most other friends I had who weren't into that same scene were either too overly religious to be any fun (sorry but it's true) or working on top of going to school and didn't have as much free time as I did.
In my junior year of college I met my future husband and then I found that at least I had someone to do stuff with on the weekends and many will agree that a relationship in it's early stages gives you more of a social life in some cases. But eventually I graduated, started working, got married and after about 2 years of marriage both my husband and I found ourselves in the same situation many our age are in. We didn't have any friends to call on. We had friends but they are either moved away, worked long hours or had kids and while we enjoyed each other's company we both found ourselves wishing we had someone our own age to invite over for dinner or go bowling or something. It didn't help that I worked in retail where hours are all over the place and you work all holidays so have time to get together with folks was hard.
Eventually I did get a job with more consistent hours and we were able to do more things like joining clubs and taking classes and we lucked out when some of my old friends from college moved back to town and despite them having a child, were usually available on short notice to do stuff and for a while, it was nice to have something resembling a social life.
But all good things must come to an end, after 10 years at a job where he couldn't move forward, my husband needed a change and the job offered paid better and had great benefits. I was ok with moving but then realized how much it sucked that just as I was getting a circle of friends, we'd have to move 2 hours away.
So I find myself back at Square one. My days are spent looking for a job, going to the gym, running errands, getting settled into our apartment and playing video games. Trying to figure out how to make friends again. Wishing I had someplace to go or someone to go visit who was nearby. Trying to see if there's anything in town I can do during the day. And some days just feeling lonely.
No comments:
Post a Comment