Charm Citizen

Friendship – Friendship is on my mind all the time. I feel like I don’t have any friends. I know this is not true. I have a pretty active social life, yet I feel like I’m missing close friendships. I hate to even say that because I do have a few friends and my sisters that I spend time with and am close to. It just feel like something is missing, especially when I look around and it seems like everyone is having fun and enjoying times with friends. I think a couple of thing are going on that make me feel this way. Or Maybe several things are making me feel this way. First, I think my location is the main factor. I live in a downtown Baltimore neighborhood which is about 40 minutes from where both John and I grew up. So many of our childhood friends still live up there and over the years, it’s gotten harder and harder for us to stay in touch or find reasons to go up there as our lives have become more complicated due to families and work. In so instances, I long for those friendships from my childhood, teen years, and early 20’s. Also, we’ve spent more than 20 years in South Baltimore and yet have no real current close connections to show for it. Many of our friends from our single years moved to the suburbs when they had kids. Or families that we really bonded with when our children were very small also moved to the suburbs. We also decided to send our kids to a citywide charter school instead of the neighborhood school which separated us further. The neighborhood is filled with families from the school who all see and interact with each other daily. I try to “belong” myself to different activities such as the neighborhood book club, attend neighborhood social functions, workout clubs , etc. I think we get wrapped up in the kids a lot too and somehow miss a lot of the activities or conversations that are happening. John and I both also have family in the area and so we often have family commitments that take us outside the neighborhood when others, without family local, seem to create family in the neighborhood. I’ll also just say that John and I don’t really drink alcohol. I don’t drink at all. Sometimes I think that separate us from some of the bonding others experience as part of drinking culture. To keep going on yen friendship thread, I also identified and made friends with many work colleagues who I considered my closest friends for many years. None of them had kids at the time. I feel those friendships have become a little more distance because of the pandemic and remote work and job switching. My current role is taken me outside Baltimore completely which was the focus of my professional universe for 15 years.

Topics for this blog – I’m trying to think about what topics I want to cover in this blog. I’m thinking everything… /at least for now. Unknown you are supposed to create some kind of niche but I just feel like getting words out of me and onto “paper”. Like my internal world needs to be purged so I can create some new inner dialogue. I think there are memories, both good and bad, to share, stories from my youth, teenage years, my partying days, dark days in my substance use and in my marriage, and my days in Baltimore City Hall, sobriety, finding my identity, motherhood, marriage, hobbies, etc. Generally, I just want to share. I’ve spent a lot of my life being private. I consider myself a private person who has spent a lot of time in a semi public eye.

Friends Part II – And after all that I had to say before, my best friend of 30+ years Kelly, came over and we hung out at our beach house. We ate crabs and pizza, the kids played badminton and we watched the sunset. Honestly, it as a perfect day.

Ear – I think I might have an ear infection. TBD.

Ocean City – Other things we did today included a trip to Dunkin Donuts and Candy Kitchen, a game of mini golf followed by ice cream, and a nap. Also, I made vegan zucchini bread in the toaster oven!