I've never had a problem with this before. Since I was a kid, making friends has been easy. And why not? There have always been opportunities to make friends. I was surrounded by peers in school and in extracurricular activities, and those opportunities tripled when I went to college and all life was about was making friends.
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| The olden days, when I had friends. |
My life now looks like sitting at home with a baby all day. (It doesn't help that we have only one car, and my husband usually needs it for work.)
I really do my best to get out when I can, and it's a lot easier now that Rhonda is older. But it's still tough to have my baby and husband as my sole company most days. It's a big change from college life, when I'd interact with dozens of people every day.
I've tried to find other moms to make friends with, but I seem to be the only person in my town who has this issue. A lot of other women are just busy, busy, busy. Everyone has jobs and kids and activities. People just don't have time for friends.
Sometimes I think, "Why don't I just do what they do and get a job or something?" The trouble is, I don't actually want a job right now. I want to take care of my baby and work on my writing. I can't even bear the thought of leaving Rhonda with someone else while I work, especially when we don't need the money.
I don't want to be busy, busy, busy. I know that I have a tendency to get too caught up in to-do lists and forget the most important things, and I want to take the time to savor the slowness of my life right now. I want to pay attention, because I can already feel this special time with my baby slipping away as she starts to grow into toddlerhood. I want to be involved in things that are important, but not at the expense of the things that are most important.
I guess I am a little jealous that everyone else is so busy. Sometimes it feels like the world is passing me by. It makes me want to get my hands dirty and get stuff done out in the world.
It would be nice if I had someone else around who was dealing with the same kind of stuff. Wanting more than anything to focus on raising her kids, but feeling the internal pressure to be more than just a mom.
I can't remember ever feeling left out in my life. I could always find a group of friends that liked me.
But I guess no matter how old you are, you can get the feeling that everyone has a life but you.
You need a playgroup! The kids play, the moms chat.
ReplyDeleteThe issue is that my child isn't old enough to play with other kids! I'm sure that when she gets older, it will be easier.
DeleteShe's old enough to play, though, right? A play DATE is when you say, "Our kids love to play with each other, so let's get them together sometime." A play GROUP is when you say, "We're all spending the day hanging out with our kids, so let's all do that in the same place so we can chat." I started going to our ward's playgroup way before Summer could play with the other kids. Playgroups are really just moms socializing while their kids run around. I actually spent plenty of time at playgroup just holding or feeding Summer while I chatted with the other moms, because Summer wasn't into independent playing as a baby. But Rhonda is pretty independent, so she'd probably have fun cruising around someone's furniture and sucking on their toys or eating grass and Cheerios at the park.
ReplyDeleteI'm with Carrie, maybe you can find a playgroup with other stay-at-home moms. In fact, when my kids were babies I had an exercise group that would keep hanging out long after our workout was over. We also would get together to can garden produce. Which you can't do until you have a garden, but my point is that if you have a "productive" purpose then maybe you can convince other moms to commit time to it, even if it's mostly for social purposes.
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