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February 18 - February 20, 2025
The only difference between a twenty-eight-year-old woman and a thirty-eight-year-old woman is that one of them tries to hide how few friends she has and the other will e-mail you out of the blue and demand to hang out after meeting you for exactly four seconds in a room full of retired people and divorced people and new moms. The late-thirties woman knows that it’s no big deal to want to make new friends. Maybe it won’t be a life-changing time, or maybe you’ll be acquaintances, or maybe you’ll be vacationing together down the road. It’s worth a shot.
Despite having lots of friends, I have no close ones. My conversations still feel stilted; they don’t flow. The mechanical nature of small talk is something that can be practiced and learned, but the easy, free-flowing give-and-take that really connects people eludes me entirely. I see people do it; I don’t know how it’s done.
Once I run out of “Have you seen this band before?” and “That beer looks good, how is it?” I don’t know what to say.
No one seems to understand that it’s a lack of words and not the fear of saying them. It’s more like writer’s block than stage fright.
I’m beginning to feel that my ex was right. That I don’t just lack skills, but that I have a fundamental inability to relate to people in a way that makes them want to get close to me. I’ve found that I love people, but I’m terrible at interacting with them. Am I just broken and undatable? Can I be fixed? How?
We expect ourselves and each other to move through the world with the bulletproof, professionally slick, faux confidence of comedic sidekicks and superheroes.
The larger problem is that you believe that there’s something wrong with you. And as long as you believe that, you’ll struggle with these situations.
friendships grow into close friendships with repeated exposure, so allow it to happen. Accumulate experience together. As you each open up, trust will build.
You have to allow time for people to reveal themselves to you, and you have to start revealing yourself—first to yourself and then to others.
Love blooms more easily among people who understand intimacy and trust with close friends. When you can tell a close friend the truth about your feelings and your insecurities and your flaws, when you can make a joke about them and your friend can tease you and you can feel seen and known and understood, that’s—well, it’s a kind of love. Casual friendship is nothing compared with that.
maybe at some point, you subconsciously latched onto the belief that your emotions were the enemy and they would fuck up your entire life if you didn’t put a lid on them. Lots of people believe that, and there are a wide range of negative side effects that flow forth from that belief.
It sounds paradoxical, but uncertainty and vulnerability are your guides through this soggy life you’re living. Leaning into your not knowing will bring you more knowledge and wisdom and understanding than you ever dreamed of.
But even once you know a lot, and everything clicks into place, and you feel like you’re on the right path and you really feel for the people around you and for the life you’ve created, you’ll still have to remind yourself that you are vulnerable and unsure at your core.
The bottom line is that being truthful and open and honest with yourself means letting in those scary emotions and noticing the angry self-talk and embracing all of it. That turmoil, that fear, that anger, that self-hatred, and that sadness will be your guide. It will—very slowly, the more you embrace it—guide you to who you are and what you love. Follow your uncertainty and fear into the darkness, accept that the darkness will always be a part of you, and recognize that that’s where you’ll find your passions. Then you’ll finally KNOW. And sometimes you won’t know, too. But it won’t feel the
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Life is not about knowing. Life is about feeling your way through the dark.
The biggest mistake new mothers make is telling themselves, “I should be able to handle this all by myself.” Bullshit. You should do what you need to do to take care of yourself and not send yourself off a fucking cliff emotionally.
