thirtysomething

The old saying is that people will show their true colours for you during your worst times. I say – I don’t want you in my worst times.

Something about an acquaintance coming out of the woodwork when they know you are going through something hellish, when they havent stood with you through the day to boring day life admin feels inherently performative to me. You feel as though you need to support me now? Where were you when I was bored every single day and had noone reaching out to spend time, noone replying to my messages.

Ultimately all friendships go through ups and downs in terms of people needing and giving support. It’s hypocritical to pass judgement on this when I have probably been the same at some point of my life. But still, I am irked. I don’t want to be treated with kid gloves. Don’t coddle me. Don’t act like you care becase you didn’t care when I hadn’t heard from you in weeks. This does not need to be a turning point in our friendship. If it were it would lead to me turning you away.

Perhaps this makes me an oddity – after all I feel like most people would want to know they have people looking out for them and thinking of them during their worst times. So why am I so opposed to this?

For me the feeling of having a genuine friend is rare. I don’t connect with others easily – I’m awkward and find small talk almost unbearable. So to be able to hold a friendship during the slow times of life is what makes it feel genuine. If they are only there for the best and worst times, it doesn’t feel like a genuine connection to me. It feels like piggybacking on someone elses emotions. If we are not checking in once a week, why are we doing this?

Am I whining and being ungrateful? Yes I think I am. I can admit that my complaints are unwarranted, that i should be happy that people care at all. I am in some ways, but I also don’t think there is anything wrong with wanting your friendships to feel like they are genuine, especially when you are a thitysomething who has a small social circle to begin with.
performative

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Nov 18
So many moments in life come with a distinct before and after.
For example: before I had my first child (or any subsequent children), after she was born.
You just know that from that moment forward, nothing will ever be like it was in the before.

At the moment I am navigating life after seperation – before divorce, but no longer living the way I was. I can feel it in my bones that I will never experience life again like it was before, and I don’t miss it usually, that before. A single thirtysomething who has the ability to choose a life she wouldn’t have considered in the before. A single thirtysomething who sometimes wonders if that is a good thing. A single thirtysomething who looks at the freedom of time now and wonders, what would it be like to love and be loved again?

Truthfully I don’t think I know what that would be like anymore. The love I had did not sustain me in the before. I longed for someone to love me the way I loved him. Now i never want to love someone like that again, so completely that losing that life has been akin to learning to live without a piece of myself. The biggest piece because when you love someone in a way that you begin to live for them you don’t really know who you are. I am now a single thirtysomething who has asked the question “what do I enjoy?”

To learn to love me in this after has been an arduous process. I have gone back to who i was in the before I was with him, a before that was 13 years previous so has been hard to find and connect with. The rediscovery of book genres, of TV shows and movies, of sports that I enjoy, and not just because there is man I am trying to please and keep the peace with. that before was filled with the teen angst that keeps you hopeful. Revisiting that youthful longing has been a joy.

I am almost two years in, so close to feeling a new after, the after divorce. This is an after I long for, the legal closure of a marriage that ran its course. The ability to say with finality “my ex-husband” and for it to be true. No beating around the bush having to explain “well, techniclly I am married, but we aren’t actually together..”. To me the after of divorce looks like freedom. It comes with a cost that I am sure will be sadness for some time, but the overall feeling is that I will finally be free of him, and of many of the ties that have held us close together.
Before and after

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Nov 13

performative

Before and after