It has taken me a few weeks to put my finger on this unfamiliar feeling I've had for at least the last couple of months, but I finally got it figured out. It's a disconnect. What I feel all too often is disconnected from my friends, peers, coworkers, and family. Regardless of the countless ways there are to stay connected to people: email, text, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, shall I go on?, I've never felt more disconnected from the world around me. It's not all the time, but it's enough that it has caught my attention and now that I have a name for it I can't stop analyzing when it started and how often it happens.
At this age my friends are single, married, married with children, divorced, you name it. Originally I thought it was being at all these different stages in our lives that makes me feel like we're not on the same page; so I've tended to believe our different paths in life have a lot to do with the disconnect. Fellow childless friends have vocalized their discontent with the growing number of baby pictures filling up their Facebook news feeds. They're not interested in seeing your baby at one month, then two months, then three months and so on. Just as married friends aren't as entertained as they used to be by hashing out every detail of the text message conversation that led to the latest argument with your boyfriend. So feeling disconnected cannot be a sentiment exclusive to me, which makes me wonder, what are some of my friends going through that they don't feel up to sharing with me now that they're in this certain place in their lives that I've either left behind or haven't visited yet? Are they feeling just as disconnected from me as I feel from them?
Sometimes I even feel disconnected from myself, which surely makes it all the more difficult to find common ground with my peers. A friend recently found out about my two miscarriages and when she said, "I'm so sorry," I brushed it off with a quick, "oh it's fine." Fine? Fine! Who am I kidding? Nothing about it is "fine" and I can't expect to identify with others when I won't even take more than a millisecond to consider what I'm feeling when faced with the opportunity to share whatever that is. Clearly, I'm widening the moat and reinforcing the walls surrounding the Kingy castle. I can't complain that no one is coming in, when I haven't even put down the drawbridge.
But to be honest, I'm probably not ready to yet. Writing about how I feel has been helpful but this blog thus far has been more of a private journal, given that approximately 4 people are aware of its existence. And I think there's a reason for the privacy. I'm not ready to fully connect again, but I'm working on it.
Today I had lunch with a friend who I hadn't seen in a long time. At first I was a little nervous, because I have felt this disconnect with almost everyone else in my life lately, so it only seemed logical that I would feel the same with someone who I haven't seen for almost a year. Luckily, it turned out that despite time and distance I didn't feel the usual disconnect. Instead we had such a nice time together that we didn't stop talking from "hello" until "goodbye." It was really fantastic, but even so, I kept a little part of me hidden and veered the conversation away from the pains that have truly defined me as of late.
This lunch date served as a reminder that I need to surround myself with the people who have been there for me through all kinds of life events and not shut them out. So for now, I'm finding my way from one phase into the next, trying to figure out where everyone from various eras of my life fits in.
