So much crazy and appalling stuff going on in the world (a rapture & end of the world that didn't come, deadly tornadoes once more, this time not in Alabama, but in Missouri) and here I am, navel-gazing. It feels 100% inappropriate, but it's either this or not blogging for me because that's what I feel like blogging today.
A friend's facebook update from this weekend: "
that only means you have lots and lots of friends and that's a wonderful thing! I missed literally hundreds of weddings in the 15 years I've been out of Brazil. I haven't gone to one in a long time. :(" --> for the record, of the events above, I participated of the funeral -- just the viewing, and the baby shower.
And I had to post another comment to clarify my previous one: "[I'm] sorry, but your update just reminded me of how hard it is to keep moving to new places every few years and the fact that I left 25 years of life behind by moving to another country. I'm usually reconciled to our decision to do that most of the time, but once in a while, it hurts a little bit."
Yes, it does. Sometimes it hurts a whole lot. I must be hormonal right now (I never know when stuff is going on in that dept. in my life, have never known, since I'm 100% "irregular"), but still... being an expatriate is hard and once in a while I need to have a good cry about it, so maybe today is the day. It also helps if I write on my journal and blogging will probably help too.
I'm thrilled with our new house, our neighborhood, the boys' school + church community (both adjacent to a boarding academy) and the prospect of living here for many years. However, as the school year comes to a close and we attend big (Spring Concert) and small (classroom "Author's tea" & Sports award night) events at the boys' school, it becomes clear that most people have lots of friends and have been part of this community for years and I'm still pretty much a newcomer who doesn't really belong.
This is a feeling that I've long learned to live with and I need to say that we do have a few good friends already. It didn't help that in the past year we lived in a really small house and weren't able to entertain much, only our Brazilian friends, so we weren't able to interact with a lot of people that we wanted to come over. I'm sure that after we have more people visit us we can make more friends.
The (maybe sad) truth is that since we left Brazil nearly 15 years ago, I only began to be truly happy after I felt part of a virtual community of like-minded friends through this blog. Only then I stopped talking about going back to Brazil. I wrote all about it in a post (still one of my favorites), titled How Blogging Changed my Life from November 2006.
It's been five years in this "virtual life" and although I continue to love blogging and blog reading, the truth is that I need "real life" friends too. It doesn't feel good at all not to have any really close and dear friends to invite to my 40th birthday party. I dreamed of having that in Brazil, of assembling all my dearest "old friends," but that's not gonna happen. We have a house instead (bitter irony, no? I HATE HATE money again. I envy rich people with a vengeance. whatever, useless, stupid rage).
So, yeah. It doesn't make me feel any better to write this post. I understand that we moved here one year ago and that I need to work hard to make new friends. The hard part is that it's very hard to make "true friends," especially now that the standards have been raised dramatically by my "bloggy" interactions with brilliant, caring, wonderful people like you. I truly feel partly handicapped by my addiction to blogging (which otherwise I usually see as a good thing).
Thanks for listening, those who were patient enough to read the whole thing.
I don't really feel bad for missing hundreds of weddings in the past 15 years. I enjoy leading an adventurous expatriate life. So I have to lift my head high and rejoice that I have so many friends (and family) all over the world and in addition to them, I have lots more wonderful friends online. Thanks for being there for me!
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1 comment:
Hugs!!! I know, it is hard. Hopefully you will make some new friends as you get more settled more. And it is really great how the Internet allows us to be in such close contact with those who are far away-- I probably interact more with certain people virtually from several thousand miles away than I would do if I were living nearby...
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