I spend a bit of time commuting so that’s often when spontaneous rumination occurs. Yesterday on the way to work the topic of my last post started banging around in my head and I think I’ve identified at least part of my problem.
Like kids, I just want contact, to connect. I think it’s why I’m good with teaching kids of that spongy adolescent age, because I completely understand and empathize with that need for personal recognition and acceptance, or to put it succinctly, touch. Whether it’s mental touch or physical touch matters not, there just must be touch. I think we forget that feeling as we grow older. It’s why we reflexively gasp when we hear about boys being allegedly molested and sexually assaulted and wonder how in the hell did it happen, why couldn’t the kid just run? It’s because you don’t remember what it was like to have someone-anyone-see you, really see you and touch you. And by the time the kid realizes that it’s the wrong kind of touch, it’s too late. But that’s a tangent, please excuse me.
I want friends like I had in college. I want to be able to spend hours with someone alternately shooting the shit and puzzling over the latest mind twist no matter the topic (I call for a resurrection of the salon, please. I’ll happily host the inaugural event). I want access to friends the way I am willing to give access. The same kind of access that one usually only grants family or personal assistants: 24/7, you just call out my name and I’ll be there. Damn if James and Carole didn’t have it right. Why am I considered weird or strange for wanting this? Why does this make others want to say to me ‘oh, grow the hell up, you’re not in college anymore’? Why does being a grown up mean you have to stop reaching out and learning?
I’m with you. I think I didn’t notice the disconnect so much when I still had a job out in the world. Now that I work at home, I realize that I don’t have that much social contact outside of my family. I used to have great friends. Now I have great friends, all of whom live somewhere else. I’m not sure even how to go about making new friends, for pete’s sake.