I'm a right Sensitive Sally, and get sad to think that in life, people come and go. Whether its having too much time on my hands, or just that natural turning 30 transition, I seem to find myself at a bit of a crossroads with some of my friends.
I guess its only natural to go from a party girl in your 20's with your phone ringing off the hook to a 30 year old sat at home with only your boyfriend, cat and dog to talk to. I get that and sometimes I really quite like it, but for me, losing people from my life, no matter what the context, doesn't get any easier.
I am prone to a serious case of FOMO (fear of missing out), generally, so looking online can make me miserable. Miserable that an old gang I used to hang with are having a roast all together or that a friend I was once inseparable from has shared some big news on Facebook meaning I am no longer on her last dialled.
It got me thinking about friends and wondering who would be there at the next milestone. (Can we call reaching 30 with all faculties in check a milestone?)
A lot of people will make excuses when they don't hear from certain people because there lives no longer coordinate, they accept that people drift apart, but then I remember that two of my best friends could currently not have more differing lives to me and we are still close. I used to sit up drinking wine on a Tuesday not caring about the school day hangover with one of my best friends Sarah Cawood, but she now lives out of London with her husband and two kids, yet we still find the time to text and call every week. Our lives are chalk and cheese but the common ground is always there, and its easy to be her friend. My mate Warren moved back home to New Zealand and is currently working on a friends winery. The time difference alone means that according to that rule we should have easily lost touch, but at least every month I get a 10am call from a drunk Warren wanting to share some stories.
My best friends from home all have babies, marriages, businesses, studies. They live 70 miles away and are on total different time scales to "us Londoners" (IE drinking on a Wednesday is totally acceptable in this city, but in Northampton its a call for AA), yet we never miss the big things, keep in touch daily on a Whatsapp group and at my best friends wedding two weeks ago I saw how wonderful and effortless our friendship is, even after 22 years.
So do we make the effort to the ones that mean more or does life get in the way of some relationships? It seems in London if you aren't on the same tube line you can start losing touch.
It was talking to Sarah about the friends I've spent the last few years hanging out with who seem to have now gone walkies when she gave me the fashion analogy. She said friends can be like flares, maxi skirts, skorts, platform heels. They can be 'of the moment.' It doesn't mean what you had at that time wasn't real or meaningful, it just means you aren't going to keep wearing flares in a room full of skinny jeans. As long as you have a handful of friends who are always there, like that lucky pair of pants you wear to every job interview, its ok for the fashion friends to come and go. Because although we all need pants, it is nice to sometimes wear skinny jeans.
I lost you all at that last line didn't i? Too many metaphors? Dammit...