Seasons

I once read that to make a friend you have to have just the right amount of self-disclosure. Enough that they can relate to you, but not so much that they are overwhelmed and/or alienated by you (you wait until later for that much information).

I think this may be my problem. You see, I have verbal diarrhea. I seem to be a pretty quiet person, but once I get talking I can't STOP talking. TMI and all that. I never used to be like this, I used to be more stoic but now don't seem to know how to keep my mouth shut. I don't say bad things...just give too much information too fast.

Tony and I were listening to a sermon on the radio the other day and the pastor was talking about loneliness. How everyone feels lonely sometimes and you just have to walk through it. How sometimes (especially in the last few weeks) I can be lying there with Tony talking and telling him I still feel lonely. Since he heard the same sermon, he said to me last night,
"You're going to be lonely no matter what I do. You are going through things I don't understand and although I can be here, I can't ease your loneliness."
Profound. Bet you didn't know I had such a profound husband, did you?

Anyway, I've also noticed this when talking to my friends who have moved away. None of us has really close friends like we used to have. I haven't even moved away and I feel like this.
With babies, and husbands, and distance, work, school, and busyness--it seems that we're all feeling sort of lonely at the same time but have no way of bridging that gap.

I'm still negotiating this gap of my late 20's. You don't live with your friends anymore (except one and he's a boy!), you don't stay up until midnight talking and drinking red wine with the girls anymore (well, I don't), you spend all your free time trying to get a minute alone and away from people because you've had a little one hanging on you all day, and when you do have a minute alone you're loading the dishwasher, washing clothes, mowing the lawn (or shoveling snow), cleaning the house, and driving to and from appointments or the grocery store.

Am I alone here? Didn't think so.

So it continues. I know this post makes me sound unhappy but I am not. I just want a girl's night out every once in awhile and some girls to go on that girl's night out with! I want people I have something in common with to talk to. I don't pretend to think that they will be like my best friend, with whom I spent nearly every evening one summer in college watching Sex and the City and drinking red wine and talking, but they would be different in their own way. In a new and good way.

Is this just a season of life? The busyness, happiness, and loneliness all meshed together? Is it just my season, or do other people feel the same way? I hope it's not just me. I think that's how many people go through life, hoping it's not just them that feels a certain way. And hoping to find many people to share those feelings with. Too much self-disclosure be damned.