NOT S OR F OR B today- just contemplating relationships

I started this blog in the late winter of 2024 as a way to sort through the process of trying to reclaim the core of who I am, of who I used to be, and to figure out how to move through the world as both the authentic version of myself and the person I am trying to become. As today is the anniversary of the death of Jerry Garcia I am of course listening to the Grateful Dead.  Their music is soul affirming to me and a thread that connects who I was and who I’m trying to be. 

I’ve come a long way, both emotionally and physically in the last year and a half but I’m still working on some of the same insecurities and quandaries.  And as a human, still looking for human connection on a real, human level.  I think that is a quest that most people struggle with at some point, yes? So, I’m going to re-iterate some of the same queries ….but since I’m in a different head space, I can see these from a different perspective.

Is it just me?   I often wonder if I’m the only person feeling lonely.  Have other people found a way to navigate the digital age and still remain friends with actual humans in actual real life?

I always thought of myself as having friends, having a crew in which I was an integral member.  I used to think these connections were real and deep.  But in re-evaluating my past, my past self, my past relationships, I’ve started to wonder. How and why did I find myself in the peer groups I did?  Convenience? Trauma bonding? Shared affinity for partying or whatever? I have stopped referring to people from long ago as “friends” and now just call them people I used to know.  Not to be unkind or out or any feeling other than just as a way for myself to reframe my life.  People that you did stuff with forty years ago but who you rarely or never see or hear from are not friends, they are past acquaintances. And I learned that that has to be OK.  It is OK.  They are different people, I am a different person.  And would we even be “friends” if we met today?  Hmmm….

So then… are friendships meant to be temporary? Do other people have real, honest to goodness long-lasting friends or are relationships mostly transactional? Or based on memories?  As I try to recalibrate and re-center myself after almost a decade of some “interesting”, re: shitty, times, I am looking at relationships differently.  

I need human contact.  I have virtual friends.  “Friends” on Facebook. People I text and post with, but whom I have never met in real life. I have followers on other social media accounts.  But I long for actual face to face conversations.  I want people in my real life. People with who I can talk to about happiness, sadness, silliness, longing and heartache.  Joy and pleasure. Food and books and ideas.  And I long for real life human beings to talk about music.  To share music.  To listen to music. To learn about music.  At night, under the stars, around a fire.  Maybe with a drink, but not necessarily.   I have wonderful people in my life, but I long for down and dirty actual friends, not people who have to tolerate me because we are related- lol!

But then I wonder – because I overthink absolutely every-fucking-thing – a habit I am also working on shedding.  It’s been so long since I’ve felt like I had a soul-friend, a group of comrades, a pack of wild and crazy like-minded monsters to share in shenanigans that I don’t know if I am even capable anymore of knowing how to be a friend.  Knowing how to interact in real life. I spend most of my time by myself or with people to whom I am related, and that’s about it.  I can go days with only actually talking to one or two or maybe three people.  And to be honest, many of those conversations are via text too.  So….. does anyone out there want to partake in human connection? Dance wildly in the moonlight? Listen to music loud? Go on ridiculous adventures to cemeteries and thrift shops and beaches and grassy slopes overlooking the water?  Does anyone want to ponder the meaning of life?  Share secrets? Laugh until we cry?  Cry until we laugh?  

Until that happens I’ll continue trying to manifest and hope the Universe is listening and it will only be a matter of time.