When You're Falling in a Forest....

How do people keep friends? How do adult women make people want to keep talking to them year after year, or even month after month? I am finding that I'm..... not good at it. I'm getting ghosted by people I thought wouldn't ghost me. And I'm kind of dying.

I feel like I'm okay at making friends, especially in the confines of a theatre when we're mingling every day for three months. And then when a show ends I'm lucky if I see anyone from it ever again. I'm used to those mini friendships ending but lately it seems like some major ones are falling by the wayside too. I want to figure out what I'm doing wrong so I can knock it off.

Hopefully I'm not completely unpleasant. I try to be a good friend. Introversion is my natural state, but I thought I did a decent job at maintaining friendships via occasional lunch dates and text messages. Most of my friends are introverts too so this worked well. But now the radio silence is deafening and I'm getting scared that I just don't get to have best friends anymore, and I don't know why.

I have Justin, who is a lifesaver, and truly the love of my life, but but no man could possible be expected to fill the emotional crevices that my girlfriends do. I have cherished friends in faraway states who would be there for movie night if NASA would get around to inventing teleportation, but alas. And there are friends who definitely tolerate me but have a real circle of friends. Best friends. How do people make the jump to the real circle, and stay there?

Dealing with the loss of a best friend is hard because break ups are publicly acknowledged. But saying "Well so and so won't talk to me anymore and I really love her" doesn't seem like something people do... I am at my wit's end and maybe all my friendships are going to end with silence.

The opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference. In middle school I got the nickname "Shadow" because I followed my friends around, begging for attention. It was humiliating, because if you have to beg for attention, are you actually friends? When I reach out repeatedly only to be ignored I feel like I've been flung back to middle school, which I believe is the literal definition of hell. I'm cringing while typing this because GUESS WHAT it's another attempt at reaching out into the void of human interaction and that's just yikes

I know life isn't a popularity contest. I know that social media is a toxic wasteland that presents a carefully cultivated image of lives that are likely as chaotic and confusing as mine. I know that friendships have an ebb and flow and that getting engaged has taken up a ton of my time. But I would really love to believe I could have a girls' night with better attendance than me and a cardboard cutout of Taylor Swift. I miss venting and laughing hysterically and going out randomly. I miss being around girls who really knew me. I am scared that I'm not enough, and that for the rest of my life I'll have an amorphous circle of 'friends' who I like, and like me, but we aren't all that close. And how am I going to be a soccer mom if I don't know how to make friends with the other moms at PTA???

I am truly grateful to the people who haven't shut me down. Please keep giving me chances. I am extremely sorry if you're reading this and I've done something that made you feel like I didn't want to be friends. Please help me improve so that I don't drive more people away.

How can I be better at making and KEEPING friends? I want to fix the problem!! Ad how do you deal with women you deeply admire, who are so COOL, ignoring you? The anxiety that tells me I am the most irritating person in the world is flaring up pretty on a regular schedule these days-- like, if given the choice between me and being punched in the face, would you hang out with me?



Cuz I'm tap, tap, tapping on the glass.....