Friends. They become a part of your life without your knowledge and then you don’t know life without them. Navigating friendships as an adult on the other hand is quite interesting.
Disclaimer: Needless to say, everything I write in this post is my experience/thoughts alone.
When we decided to move abroad, I never realized I would feel this lonely or left out because of no friendship group. Since I am currently not working here, I don’t have any colleagues who could potentially become “friends”. I have my 2 closest friends back in India and we talk over the phone and exchange messages. But it’s never the same as meeting friends over the weekend or hanging out for a quick lunch on a weekday.
I did get a chance to socialize with my husband’s colleague’s wives and that didn’t really work out. They were both North Indians and had more in common with each other and I didn’t fit the group. Sad to say that language actually became a barrier here. Being a South Indian, I couldn’t understand half the things they were talking about even though I can understand a little bit of Hindi. This whole post was triggered after meeting them last week actually. When I got to know through conversations that they had met quite a few times and gone out for camping or dinners without me I couldn’t help but feel a bit dejected. I know that we couldn’t have been close friends but I imagined that we could at least be acquaintances and hang out once in a while. Of course, that didn’t happen and I felt like a little schoolgirl who was ignored by the other girls during lunch. Maybe I should have tried harder by being in touch with them. I don’t know.
Making friendships as an adult is hard. It is tricky. Being an introvert really doesn’t help. So now, I have turned to social media to see if there are any meetups for introverts where I could meet some nice people. A girl can only dream and since I am dreaming, we might as well go a step further and think that we could find a friend and hang out for a cup of coffee.
If someone does actually come across this post of mine, I would love to know how your experience with friendships as an adult has been. Let me know in the comments below.