Making Friends

Tara Thinks...

Some people are blessed with the talent to make friends easily. I am blessed with falling into a great set of friends at a very young age, like Jr. High. Some people, like me, need to hold on to the friends we have because it's hard and scary to make new ones. I was pretty much attached at the hip to my girlfriends through high school and when I went to BYU it wasn't too bad because I roomed with one of them, and 2 more were down at Dixie and visited often. And even now I talk to most of them frequently. Then through, ahhh.... okay, seven years of college - you might think I would make some more friends. But I found it was much easier to get a boyfriend and hang with his friends than to click with a new girlfriend. Not to mention I continued to live with one or the other of my HS friends most of the time. I had 3 or 4 roommates that I really enjoyed and that I would have considered friends, whom I still exchange Christmas cards with at least. I became close to 3 fellow chem majors, ditto on the Christmas cards. And I had one random roommate that became one of my "girls," even letting me live with her family (husband, 2 kids) my last semester at BYU. She even came to my wedding. Maybe we don't talk as much as we'd like anymore, but I'm still staying with her when I take my fam to UT later this month.

So, it's a good thing I've stayed put in Mesa, where at least some of my girlfriends still live. And thank goodness for family! I never dreamed I'd be this close to my sister, or have such great sis-in-laws. But when Aaron's job moved us to St. Petersburg, FL - I was pretty worried. Luckily I had Alden by then and he takes up a ton of time naturally. And long-distance calls are the same as local nowadays. So I would have been okay. But instead of just okay, I managed to find my own twin, practically - waiting there in our little branch in FL. I can't imagine what life would have been like there without Shannon. And even though we've been back in Mesa for like 7 months now, I still talk to Shannon more than anyone else, even Aaron if you only count phone time. If the Johnsons would just move here, life would be complete!

But here I am, at 30, trying to make new friends. And I swear, it's worse than Jr. High - should I invite this person for a playdate? Is it too soon to call them? Do you think they had a good time? Will we be able to find anyone who might go out with Aaron & I? I do have a few pretty good friends, but I worry that they get sick of me. I miss Shannon who would just know we were hanging out every day.

That's why I like this blogging thing. I know some people who have blogs. And they have links to some of their friends who have blogs. And they have friends too - you know how it goes. And sometimes when my boys are sleeping, when I am supposed to be doing laundry or dishes or something, I check out blogs. And some of these people are really cool! Almost all of them have little kids and deal with the same things I do. It's like having friends without one party knowing it. Some blogs I have been reading more regularly. Yesterday I came across this girl (or is it a lady? or a woman?) - a Mom, who sounded exactly like me. I read through her recent posts and I think she is great. I want to be her friend. I wish we could hang out. Too bad she lives somewhere far away. Plus she seems to have tons of blogging friends, gets like 5 or 6 comments on every post, and probably has tons of friends in real life too. Too good for the likes of me. So the question is - should I contact this random girl or not?