This weekend I felt hopelessly lonely. To say I don't have friends would be dramatic and inaccurate, but so many of my friends live in other states or other countries. My local friends all have their own things going on. I no longer have anyone to hang out with on a regular basis, and I miss it. I wish that I could make new friends, but it's been a long time since I met anyone I enjoyed in large doses. One thing that’s been nice about my decreased social life is that I no longer have any "friends" who annoy me or I don't really like, or who I don't like hanging out with outside of a group. But that leaves me lonely.

I went out on Saturday and felt incredibly alone. One of TL's shows, full of people I don't actually like. Laughing and smiling to be polite, but wanting to curl up and wallow because pretending to be happy and friendly is exhausting.

And TL doesn't get it. We love each other, but we don't understand each other. And that is occasionally devastating. I don't know if that's the right way to love, or if that's something that's different in each relationship, but nights like Saturday, it’s devastating. I feel so many conflicting emotions because I take comfort in his presence, even when I am sad that he does not understand me. I can talk to him, and he will listen, but he never understands the things I feel.

I’ve always spread myself out across so many people, it's hard to remember if I've ever really been understood. Did I just have so many people in my life, each only understanding a small part of me, that I felt understood? Did it somehow add up? Or have I never been understood, and it’s only recently that it’s mattered?

I don’t know the answers, I don’t know the solutions. I do know that for all of my over-analyzing as a teenager, I never held still long enough to think about these things. I was wild and constantly in motion, flitting around from place to place both physically and emotionally. I am now grounded and motionless. I have no choice but to examine myself and my surroundings.

Late on Saturday I had this overwhelming feeling that I never should have left Manhattanville. What a useless feeling. There is no purpose in regretting the events I set in motion 8 years ago, but I did so nonetheless. I suppose I like adding insult to injury. Sometimes I’m just in the mood to wallow and I want to be as miserable as possible. So I thought about what my life might have been like if I’d stayed. I destroyed myself a bit more imagining that life. Imagining what it would have been like to stay in that fortress, sheltered but feeling so, so free. What it would have been like to emerge from all of it in 2011, ready for something new. Logically I know that things wouldn’t have stayed the same. Johanna, Ika, and Dimitri left the same semester that I did. That in itself would have been catastrophic change. I know this. I know that life doesn’t stay the same for very long, and even if I’d stayed, things would have changed.

I also know that I am, in the long run, better off for my experiences. I matured at least twice as fast as I would have if I’d stayed. I found the sort of relationship I never thought I’d have. I became skilled in a profession that I enjoy and that also pays the bills. I took a roundabout way, but I did end up in a good place.

I think I did myself a disservice by not realizing that my life was changing when I was younger. I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing when I came back here. Nothing I did was purposeful. Everything was nothing short of an accident. But things changed, and I changed, even if I didn’t realize it. I am different, and regretting things I did when I was a different person is a waste of time.

So I wasted some time on Saturday, regretting and wallowing.

I’m over it now. Obviously, factually, I still don’t have friends to hang out with regularly, and that does make me sad. I think I’m going to take to Google. Surely there must be an app for this? I mean with modern technology, there must be something out there to allow adults to find other local adults to be friends with?

Of course, that brings up whole new problems. I can’t find a way to delicately word this, so I’m going to say what I’m thinking: I don’t like women. Obviously that’s not quite true, as I am a woman, and most of my current friends are women. But just in general, it’s hard for me to really click with women. My current female friends are people I’ve been friends with for a minimum of 7 years. They have stood the test of time. I typically, at the prospect of making a new female friend, get VERY excited. And then VERY quickly realize that I actually can’t stand talking to them for more than 10 minutes, and actually only like them in small doses. For every good female friend I have, there have probably been 5 other female friends who I thought I liked, only to realize weeks/months/years later that I kind of can’t stand them.

I get along better with men. But if I find some kind of friend-finder thing, I can’t very well search for men, can I? Meeting friends of the opposite sex out and about in the world is one thing, but seeking them out on the internet is different. If TL told me he was going to meet a woman he’d met online, I’m quite certain the first words out of my mouth would be, “Are you fucking with me?”

Where was I going with all of that? Oh, right. Sad about lack of friends, but no longer wallowing in a pit of despair about what could have been, will try to look for friends, will not be sad about things I cannot change.