Friends

Tonight I got a phone call from a friend.  Making friends as an adult isn't an easy thing.  You have work, maybe school, but most of the people you know are people you've known for a good many years.  You met through school growing up.  Through previous employment.  Through mutual acquaintances.  Oh, perhaps you add in your neighbors.  All the kids at the local playground.  That's how you meet people.  It just gets more difficult as you get older.  Perhaps it's because we all become a little more reserved.  More guarded.  We are particular about who we let inside our "inner circle".  I am so guarded.

Anyway.  I got a phone call from my friend tonight.  She falls in the category of "new friend."  We met years ago, but we never really connected.  For a long time I thought she didn't like me much.  I wonder if she felt the same way?  I suppose our friendship really took off a few months ago after Mr. B, Little Monster, & I moved in with her and her husband.  What a good and crazy time it was living with them!  Over the last few weeks I realized how good it was to spend time with them, how much we all needed that connection, and how much I miss them.  I didn't realize it was a mutual feeling.  When she called tonight and we started talking as if no time had passed I had an epiphany.  We are friends, really and truly friends... no longer just because our husbands are friends... and I felt like such a loser for not having called her first!  (you can laugh)

Was I simply too self-conscious, too self-absorbed to realize that she considered me a friend as well?  I feel like I have been too closed off, too reclusive and selective.  I am laughing to myself, thinking somehow she just found a way to let herself inside my bubble--and I'm glad for it.  I'm glad she opened me up and opened up to me, and she probably has no idea.  It's so funny how things like this work themselves out.  But I guess this is what life is all about.  I love funny little surprises.  And new friends.