Day 332: Fully Aware in a World of Comfortably Numb

I have itchy feet again. I’m not talking about a medical condition, though that might be easier to cure, I’m talking about my insatiable and ever-present need to move on in life. I have been in Charlotte for 18 months and I think I’m over it. Don’t get me wrong, it is a lovely city and the people are very friendly, but much like the financial and real estate industries it’s built on, the people are fairly shallow. I don’t have any friends that I feel are game changers. There are plenty of people I like and that are nice enough, but they aren’t really my friends and no one ever wonders what I’m up to. I guess that says more about me than it does them, but it’s easier to just assume they are all bad friends and to cut my losses.

I think maybe I’m just tired of always being alone. The husband is never here, both physically and emotionally. When a person works fifteen hour days the weekends are needed to just vegetate, not to engage on a deeper level. I miss him and I’m lonely without him, but that is a situation that cannot and will not change anytime in the near future. So that leaves it up to friends and despite my best efforts, I’ve just not been able to make a big enough impact on anyone’s life that they seem to want to move beyond the superficial. I find people here to be fairly shallow. They are all friendly and social, but rarely go deeper and I am an in-depth person. It is a constant struggle to stay interested in people who feel a greater need for everyone to like them, than to have a distinctive personality.

This is my least favorite thing about the south. That southern charm you always hear about has absolutely nothing to do with genuine emotion, it’s generic and saccharin. So after a year and a half even the people I thought were my friends turn out to just be more stepford clones. They seem nice enough, but their friendship is a house of cards and I long for intellectual discussion and actual effort. I’ve always had a hard time making female friends, but now that I’m married it’s harder too with men. The guys I befriend are not people the husband has anything in common with and it’s awkward to have male friends that he wouldn’t want to hang out with.

There are so many rules to being married and foremost among them seems to be that you instantly adopt one another’s friends. Which basically means I’m screwed. So here I am, sans any deep friendships and no husband for most of every week. Hell, come summer, he will be gone most of July through September. I am tired of being alone. This is why people get married in the first place and when they’ve outgrown the mystery and excitement of one another, they have kids. People breed so they never have to experience what true alone-ness is.

Well, I’ve been alone most of my life and that doesn’t look to be changing anytime soon. It’s hard and some days it’s downright heart-breaking to know not one single person in the world cares enough to make time for you, but that’s not enough for me to want to bring children into the world. I deal with being alone on a daily basis. Tell me, who would you be without your partner or your kids? Can you even imagine that life? It’s difficult and while it is my choice to an extent. it wouldn’t suck if every once in a while someone cut me some slack and made an effort. For now, there’s nothing to do but stay the course, but I feel the itchy feet and know I’m going to need to move on soon, there’s not much here for me and I don’t think I’ll miss it or it’s superficial, fair-weather friends in the slightest.