Lonely Days

Warning: This is going to be another one of those sad-sack woe-is-me posts, but I promise it will (hopefully) be the last one for a while.

I have some close friends, but we mainly talk on the phone or g-chat. Most of my friends have groups of friends I'm not a part of and, in many cases, their other friends probably don't know I even exist.

I have lots of friends at work--but that is all they are, work friends. I don't go out to lunch with them. With few exceptions, we don't hang out on weekends. Every once in a while I'll go to a happy hour, but unless it's organized as a work event, I don't see most of my co-workers outside of the office.

I have my FACEBOOK friends. Once upon a time, I was "real" friends with many of them. Some of them, I don't remember how we ever got out of touch. Some of them, I don't remember at all. They put up pictures of husbands and children and road trips with their friends. I think it is this Facebook thing that brings me to the realization that I am lonely as Hell.

Once upon a time, this wasn't the case. I remember going to movies and shows and getting horribly lost on way back from Great Adventure and winding up at a diner eating cheese fries.

I am a difficult person to be friends with; I was even moreso in years past. I'm moody, I'm tactless. . . I've spent a good deal of my life miserable, and some of that misery oozes out and gets your shoes messy. But on the other hand, I'm funny and I try to show concern for others, and I love to have my head scratched. Wait, no, that last one is my cat. But it's not like people run away from me like I have the plague. I've brought a lot of this on myself. I reject invitations. I make plans but don't keep them because I decide I don't want to leave my apartment. I don't typically reach out to people. And now, all these years later, I see what wonderful groups of friends my old friends have formed. And I'm truly happy for them.

I am a loner. I like going to the movies by myself. I like waking up on Saturday morning and doing whatever the heck I want. But there has to be a balance. I've retreated so far into CarliWorld, population: 1. I've forgotten what it's like to make plans, to go to a party, to be WITH PEOPLE. I feel unsocialized, uncivilized. At the end of the day, I have few shared experiences, few people to spontaneously hang out with.

Maybe I should get a volleyball and name him Wilson.