Real Life Friends

Since moving to Istanbul the whole friendship thing has been a little rough. I have had patches of this, off and on, for my entire life. When you are a kid making friends is easy because you have school and are assigned projects together, or you play on the same sports teams. Unless you are the military kid who is whisked in and out of classes every six months to move to a new school, town, or state. Then it is harder. Then you have college, and making friends is easy because you are all away from home for the first time and NEED friends, plus you all live in the same dorm. Then you are suddenly out in the real world and that safety net of friendship is taken away. Unless you work at a summer camp. Then it is like permanent college, with friends floating through... the same for a conservation corps. In Peace Corps you are assigned friends. Locals, fellow pcvs etc. Then suddenly you are 29 and wondering how to make new friends. You could go back to hashing, but you know the drinking isn't good for you. Everyone at the university is younger, surrounded by their own friends, and not married. Your husband is supposed to be your best friend, not your only friend. <sigh> Friendship is a tricky thing. How do you make time and invest energy into these new people? You can barely get your runs in, let alone your school work and other obligations. Is friendship an obligation?

I miss:

The parties that I hated. (And I hated them all) I miss the messiness of them, and I missed the shared guilt of them. I miss the card games and bottles of wine. I miss the support that my friends gave me in going to IBTs or Colors.

Going on play-dates. Museums, shows, concerts, frisbee in the park and a bit of steal the bacon.

Deep intellectual conversations. Books, movies, theories and such.

Trying to build a community. Orphan's christmas, sunday night supper.

People that really knew me.

Talking with one of my best friends I have to wonder... is this something that we all lose as we get older? Or is it something that my nomadic lifestyle has forced me to abandon? 

Fits in the Night

Last night my brain decided that it was time to whirl again. After two months of constant stimulation I finally had some time to relax. I was away from people, in a familiar bed, in the quiet of a place that I know. It felt peaceful. Except the peace came with a price. The release stimulated a bit of mania. I use mania too loosely. My brain swims. It runs. It fucking gallops. Is it "mania?" Maybe. Whatever it was I was happy that it had waited until we were back in Istanbul, away from weddings and relatives and such, to surface.

I wasn't exactly amused by it. In fact, I was rather bored and irritated by it. I suppose that I should clarify what exactly "it" was, but it is rather hard to describe. As long as I was stimulated I was fine. I could watch a movie and everything would feel normal, except that I was very sleepy and did not want to watch a movie. Then, as soon as I turned off my computer and tried to go to sleep my brain would not let me. I was gripped with a sense of impending doom. Anxiety? I felt like there was something I had forgotten to do, something important that I had left unfinished. I have had to dot so many i's in the past couple of months that it is a fair feeling to have. But it was beyond a normal irritation gnawing at my brain. It was a fear that bounced around and sank into my heart. I thought that maybe I should stay awake and write. It has been awhile since I have done a night of writing, but really I wanted to sleep. So I watched a couple of episodes of Friends, took a melatonin, curled up against my husband and tried to sleep.

It took awhile for the melatonin to kick in, and in that 15 minutes I lay there thinking that I really should try to describe what was happening to me. I remember thinking that it was funny because I can always recognize it as my "manic stage," now, and I can know when it is coming and how it will feel and yet it always feels new and different and unexpected. I remember thinking that was very important and that I should remember it and explore the concept in the morning. It is morning now and I can't really understand why I thought any of that was important. It was only fits in the night. Nothing real. Nothing solid. Nothing.