I just chatted with a friend in California, and I felt really distant from her and her life–out of synch.
She said she'd dressed up as so-and-so from the xyz music video for Halloween, and I had no idea what she was talking about.
I also found out she just moved back home from an apartment near downtown San Diego to the garage converted guest house she was living in for a while during and after college. I asked how long she'd been back at her parents', and she couldn't remember, which made me feel even more out of touch. She moved so long ago she can't remember when and I didn't even know about this?
I began to worry that we wouldn't have much more to talk about. I mentioned that the wedding was nice, but not really my thing, and I got the impression she didn't really understand. I've always thought she was on my side of the the-wedding-isn't-important-it's-the-relationship-that-counts debate, and I only just found out that she's been big, white, and $$$ all along.
I was talking about my parents visiting as well, how I took the train to Nîmes, the metro with my parents, a friend who has a vacation home two hours north of Toulouse, and I felt like I was speaking Greek to her. She spent a semester in Bonn, so she has an idea of what it's like living in Europe, but not much more than an idea. She was a stereotypical American student abroad: took classes in English, got drunk a lot, travelled a ton, and barely got to know her neighborhood let alone the city she lived in. I worry that talking about visiting Roman ruins in Nîmes or Renaissance buildings in Toulouse is too far removed from the American lives of my friends. I might come across as boastful, snooty, or worse: someone they no longer know.
Every once in a while I'll complain about the meager (or nonexistant) efforts of my friends to keep in touch with me despite the distance. B is the first to tell me to stop my bitchin' and to call them or email them instead of waiting for them to contact me, but the argument that 9 hours of distance is really hard doesn't cut it any more. What if it's not the 9 hours difference that keeps them from calling, but the growing gap between our lives and the way we live?
2 comments:
I feel the same way you do. The last few times I talked to my best friend back home I definitely felt it was more then the time zone that was causing the gap. I left so many freinds behind when I came here, and I hardly alk to any of them anymore. I dont really feel comfortable and have little to say...
Because I'm a cowardly person I'm going to go anonymous and say this.
And it probably isn't my place to say this at all, but I'm going to anyway.
Have you noticed how virtually every single post of yours is always focusing on the negative?
I know that blogging is largely an outlet for frustrations and disappointments and everyone does their fair share of negative blogging from time to time but I notice with yours it's just every single post, even when you have good news you focus on the negatives. I feel sad when I read your posts but I wondered if maybe you didn't realize how negative you come across and that you are perhaps stuck in a negative thinking rut?
It's your blog and maybe I have no right to post this, but I think it explains why you have so few comments on each post...
That isn't to say that some of the things you complain about aren't justified, not at all. But really, even when it's something good you put the negative first.
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