The Mean Reds

"You know those days when you get the mean reds?" 
"The mean reds, you mean like the blues?" 
"No. The blues are because you're getting fat and maybe it's been raining too long, you're just sad that's all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you're afraid and you don't know what you're afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?" 
- Holly Golightly to Paul Varjak, Breakfast at Tiffany's

As much as I love this scene, and as much as I feel like "mean reds" is the closest I can get to naming this tight anxious sadness, I wouldn't say that I am feeling afraid exactly. But I do feel like I'd benefit from a hot cry, or a vacation, or, I don't know, an attitude transplant. I'm not sure. Angst more than anxiety, but it sure feels like something that should be called the mean reds. 

The only reason I really write this at all is because I really really wish that I knew whether other people feel this way sometimes most of the time. 

Trying to make friends in your mid-30s is about as much fun as shopping for life insurance or preparing for a tax audit. Honestly. It is making me (us) feel:

1. deflated
2. anxious
3. lonely
4. un-Jesusy
5. grossly self-absorbed

Do you want to know how ridiculous it has gotten? I've actually found myself looking in the mirror wondering if I would have more luck making girl friends (GIRL FRIENDS) if I got a new hair cut and tried harder to LOOK CUTE. Yes. Look cute. Have cuter purses or shinier hair. Lose 15 pounds. Have a more interesting job. 

And then I slap myself in the face and realize that the real anxiety is less about looking a certain way and more about Who I Think I Am and What Happens When People Find Out. Just like it was when I was single and dating, I obsessed over my weight, my look, my accessories as a distraction with the parts of my "self" that I felt I could control, and that I felt needed to be tweaked to get boys to want me. But I always knew deep down, just like I know now, that that is NOT what my fear and anxiety are really about. I'm really afraid that when someone gets to know me - when they make it past the gray frumpy hair and the home-made tote and the not-so-stylish clothes they will get to know me, and they will reject me. The actual me. 

I have enjoyed getting to know some of the women from church and from our small group. And I know that "friends" does not have to equal "people who think exactly alike and believe all the same beliefs about everything". I know. But why does it feel SO MUCH HARDER to live that way now? I have friends in Chicago who disagree with me about all kinds of things. But we are still friends, and it is all good. And we love each other. Maybe it's the fact that everyone is busier now. Has kids. Has job stuff, family stuff. Everyone is more choosy about how they spend their time, so they are going to choose to spend that precious time with people with whom they have an easy comfort and don't have to worry about letting their hair down.

Maybe.

All I can say is that I feel like I have slid the most important pieces of my life and my heart into smooth file folders, and every time I spend time with one of the new friends (or, more honestly, Friend Candidates), I flip through my folders and look for the sheets that are most appropriate for this particular friendship. They never all come out at once. At least one stays tucked away. 

We had two different social engagements this week with people from our new church, and we both started out each time with high hopes but we left feeling deflated. We felt like we were tiptoeing around with our real feelings and beliefs choking in our throats. It wasn't so much that everyone is theologically so different, but socially, politically, justice-stuff, all that jazz? We were mum about our side for the sake of polite conversation. And that gets old.

So one weekend maybe we're volunteering at an LGBT advocacy event and the next we're volunteering with our church. That doesn't feel squicky to me until a church friend asks what we did over the weekend. Or a work colleague asks to hang out on a Wednesday night and I say that I'm going to a Bible Study. It didn't feel this torturous in Chicago. And it probably doesn't have to now. But it does. It DOES! 

I could go on. I have examples of friends that we started to make that never emailed us back (ever) after we had dinner at their house and we told them we do not vote Republican. Or how a lovely couple about our parents' age invited us to talk with them about ways to get involved at the church and gave us this "intake form" where we had to answer questions about our beliefs and theology and stuff and my darling Hubs wrote back a very detailed, thoughtful response about his beliefs and laid them all bare. We're both still holding our breath for a response. So, you know, it sort of sucks. I know we are not perfect, but come on. The churchies won't have us, but we really want Believer friends. So far both of us have made some pretty great friends from among our non-church acquaintances. And that's not a bad thing. But it does feel like the church folk down here would rather keep us at arms' length. I'd really rather just hug it out. I miss hugs.