Friends?

I know that if I want friends, I have to forge out on my own into the world and try to make some. But I have never had to do this before. I had sisters. We have always had a blast together, and we still do whenever we get together.

But that isn’t able to happen very often anymore.

I’ve never been very good at making friends. I was always amazed by all the friends I saw my sisters make, seemingly without any effort! I couldn’t imagine how they did it. I had a few close friends (Maybe 2?) and they were penpals.

I get so nervous, I don’t want to offend anyone, and I want people to like me. I usually stand around wondering if I should try to think of something to say to someone, and hoping that if I do say something to someone I’m not to terribly annoying. Dang, that sounds so highschoolish.

Whenever someone talks to me I am silently wondering why this person is talking to me? Do they feel sorry for me? Is it because they expect something from me? What am I supposed to do!? (I’m not sure why people scare me so much. I want friends, but its so much easier when you are just BORN with them!)

My friend-making encounters at church usually go something like this.

Potential Friend Material (PFM): “Hi, How are you?”

Me: “Pretty good, haven’t been out of the house much lately. How about you?”

Now it could go one of several ways.

PFM: ” We are doing good. Well, glad everything is going well, see you next week!”

PFM: “We have all been really sick and I’m exhausted and need to go home right away today.”

PFM: “We have (insert some lighthearted fun activity here) scheduled with our family this week and we are really looking forward to it” (I’m never sure how to respond to this one, “Well, thats nice. I haven’t seen my family for 6 months?”)

PFM : ” You should try going to a “Mom and Me Class”, they are a lot of fun and you get to meet people” (I tried this one time with a 2 year old, a 11 month old while pregnant with my third. Has anyone ever been able to pull this off? EVERY other mom there had one child, I felt very strange.)

I have lived here for a year now, and while I realize that isn’t very long I get discouraged sometimes. I really want to make friends, but I just don’t think I’m very good at it. What am I doing wrong? How (and where?) do you make friends?

And I promise that my next post is going to be something deep and theological instead of whining.