Friendship

This post has been on my heart for a long while, years even.  I want to write about friendships, and I don't mean to hurt anyone by writing what I'm going to write.  I feel a huge loss in my life in this area.  I have no in-real-life friends.  I wish I had someone to go to coffee with frequently, someone who cares about my life.  I wish we had a family we were simpatico with to get together of an evening for long conversations and fun with the kids.  I wish someone would call me and text me all the time.  I wish I had a fun, shared experience with someone that would blossom into that full friendship that comes from deeply knowing someone and wanting to keep knowing them.  I think friendships like that usually start in public school, and for that reason I regret that I didn't go to high school.  College is the other place that deep friendships start, but really the only friend I came out of college with is Tim.

My mom never really had close friends.  And growing up my siblings and I told each other that siblings were the best friends, and that we didn't really need friends besides our family.  I did have a few friends, but we've drifted apart over the years, probably because our lives have gone such different directions.  Even know I have heard from my family that siblings and cousins are the best kind of friends.

I don't disagree that sisters are amazing friends.  I really cherish my sister friendships, but I miss the friendships that I see other places.

Being a special needs mom is lonely.  I know my life is going to look different from other moms' lives.  I guess there aren't many normal women sitting up right now while their three year olds are watching Color Crew in bed, while tube feeding, while waiting for the Benadryl to kick in.  Maybe my friend is destined to be Ilse and Ilse only.  She will be with me until one of us dies.  But I'd like to try for more.

I was talking to Tim about this again last night.  We've talked about this many times over the last several years.  We feel like we had one experience in our marriage with another couple that could have turned into a good friendship, but it would have taken change on the other couples' part, because they constantly treated us like we were young and foolish.  Since then, we've just stuck together and enjoyed our families, but we wish for more.

So, I told Tim last night that I am going to make a friend this summer.  I'm going to go out of my house and make a friend, and I'm going to pursue that friend and hopefully the friend will pursue me, and then we will build a friendship that can last a long, long time, so that maybe we can be these kinds of friends: