I write a lot about the process of getting older. It’s even the main theme of my second book…which is ostensibly a memoir about pregnancy and style, but is really an exploration of the feeling that I’ve been struck by so often during these past few years: the sense that I somehow teleported straight from a bar on the Sunset Strip into adulthood, with no real understanding of how in the world it came to be that I went and officially Grew Up.
It just happened.
It’s a bizarre – and in many ways, exciting – thing to realize: that when I’m standing there in the middle of one disaster or another, looking around for an adult to come along and help out, that adult I’m looking for is me. And I can handle it – whatever “it” is – myself.
But not everything about getting older is wonderful opportunities for growth and self-empowerment, and not everything can (or should) be done alone. As an example, something that I’ve wrestled with over the past few years – and that I’ve noticed other women my age wrestling with, especially the ones who are married with kids – is just how hard it can be to develop (and then maintain) adult friendships. Life gets in the way: you had plans for dinner on Wednesday, but then a kid is sick, or a babysitter doesn’t show up, or an unexpected work deadline arises, or you’re just too tired to move. And you cancel, and mean to reschedule, and then…don’t.
Over the years, friendships seem to fall lower and lower on your list of priorities. And making new friends? Dead last. By the time you hit thirty, you (or at least I) feel like you’ve sort of made the friends that you’re going to make in your life, partially because it’s easier to get to know someone when you can bond over bad boyfriends and bad pizza and how miserable that 8AM Economics class is…but mostly because you just don’t have the time anymore. It feels easier to just narrow down your focus onto your family, to put yourself and your partner and your kids on a little island and let your other relationships fall to the side.
Over the summer, when we were all the way on the other side of the country from most of the people we know, something Kendrick and I talked a lot about was how we missed those years when our friends weren’t just a “part” of our lives, but necessary. We talked about how important it is to have – and take the time to maintain – an adult community comprised not just of people to “pass the time” with, but people who make your life richer, who are walking through life alongside you not because they “have” to for one reason or another – because you work in the office right next to them and hey, you have to eat lunch with someone – but just because you recognize in each other a kind of kindred spirit.
We’ve made friendship less and less of a priority in the years since we had our children. But last weekend, we took a little leap of faith in the direction of changing that.
If you’ve been reading here a long time, you may remember that a few years ago I started having readers contribute posts to a section of the site called “The Community.” One of the first contributors was a blogger named Becca who wrote about her daughter’s nursery, and in the years that followed she and I maintained an email friendship. I followed her parenting site, and then her home decor site, and watched as her daughter grew and her son was born and she went through hard times and came out very, very brave. I was struck by her voice, by her openness – by her total willingness to share, to lay her heart wide open for whoever chose to see it and make herself vulnerable and say I am flawed and that is okay – and by the way she wrote about her children, which made so much sense to me and helped me through so many confusing and challenging times of my own. And then, a few weeks ago, Becca asked if we’d like to come to Philadelphia to visit with her family.
I know I don’t seem shy, but I am. I get tired before the start of any party, because the thought of spending hours interacting with people only makes me worry about all the ways in which I have the potential to screw up, accidentally show just a little bit too much of who I “really” am (which is someone who is virtually guaranteed to, at some point, say something completely inappropriate and spend the next few hours wishing I hadn’t said anything at all). And so my automatic response was “Oh, we can’t” (too far/too much else to do that day/too difficult with two kids), and then I realized: how many times in life do you feel a connection with someone you haven’t ever even met in person? And what a rare thing, to have someone extend a branch of friendship to you, to say “Let’s be a part of each other’s lives.” It’s so easy to be skeptical of that kind of sincerity, so easy to be wary of friendships forged in the digital world…but when it comes down to it, an offer of friendship is too big of a gift to turn down, and so I decided to be a little brave, and to say yes.
And so we drove down to Philly, and at the end of the day we drove back having not just “had a nice day”…but having had the kinds of conversations that can feel like a dose of medicine in these days when you’re raising your kids and figuring out your career and worrying worrying worrying about it all – the kinds of conversations that remind you that underneath the responsible parent, the grown-up with millions of things you have to do before they can turn even one iota of thought to things that you want to do…you’re still you.
I guess that’s it: friends remind you of yourself.
On the drive home, Kendrick and I were talking, and we realized that our decision to drive all the way to Philadelphia to spend the day with people we’d never met felt very similar to our decision to spend the summer in California (and then to move there in a few months).
Sometimes, you just have to say yes. To that person who asked you to hang out for no reason other than they thought you seemed nice, to a drive to a place you’ve never been just because you think you might like it, to all the things that scare you but that you suspect may just turn out to be wonderful. It’s easy to play it safe, only do the things you know you love, only see the people you know you get along with…but when you take a chance, when you invest yourself and your time based on nothing but a hunch, that’s when you might make a discovery.
Just because you’re a grown-up doesn’t mean you have to stop growing. And meeting new people, letting them become a part of your life and feeling grateful that they want you to be a part of theirs…it not only allows you to grow your friendship circles, but tells you that wonderful things exist beyond those that you know now. That you don’t have to feel alone in this world that can feel so very lonely, because there’s so much good stuff out there if you just keep looking.
