Moving is hard. Not moving can be hard, too!

I had no intention of writing about blogging as your passion and then not blogging again for weeks.  I suppose that is the trouble with blogging your life– sometimes life gets in the way of blogging.  Things have been so busy and overwhelming, i don’t even know where to start.

I will start with one and just post others as I have time.  (Including helping clean up and pack my childhood home so my Dad can move and becoming and stumbling with being the elementary school’s PTA president.)

Last weekend my daughter’s best friend moved.  They have been best friends since kindergarten.  When you are in third grade, that is practically a lifetime.  That is a hard transition for a kid.  What makes it harder is that her best friend’s mom is also one of my best friends.  We certainly feel the loss of this family deeply.

I suppose it helps my daughter to see that she is not alone in the feeling of loss. We spent last Saturday evening after they left snuggled under blankets watching movies.  Of course, I would have chosen different movies, but in this case the movies of choice were High School Musical 1 and 2 and started on 3 but it became too late to get through it.   (I know.  It is heartbreaking to have not finished the 3 movie marathon.)

For Gabriella making new friends or bonding with friends she has known in her class but she was not close to is a bit easier.  You just start playing games on the playground or sit with them at lunch or even share your coolest toys.  I wish it was as easy for an adult like me.

When I was talking to my sister I compared it to being divorced.   You are still there and you still there and you still have the same people in your life but your “partner in crime” is gone.  It is hard to try to open up again in a new way with old friends when you are, well, old(er).  They have their “groups” and the people they do things with already firmly established.  How do you break into a new group when you have never been a part of it before.  Adults can be set.

Don’t misread me.  I am not sitting home all alone whining about “poor me” for feeling alone.  I am trying to open myself up to new opportunities and new friends.  I am just not as good as it as I was in 4th grade when it was easy to just assume that of course it is okay to just say “Let’s be friends!” and you have a new group of friends to run with when you want it.

When I find myself worrying about it, I take a step back and think about my friend.  She is in a new city, a new home, a new school with none of the familiar things around her that she has come to know so well living here for over a decade.  I at least have familiarity.  I talk to her and do what I can do to help her realize how wonderful she is and how she will be surrounded by new friends in no time.  Every ending brings with it a new beginning.  Her ending of her life here is a fresh new beginning for her.  And, by the same token, I need to remember that her moving (an ending for me) is a new beginning for me as well.  I just need to figure out how to embrace that.

For now, I am taking my daughter’s lead and opening up to new experiences and new people. And?  Trying to figure out how to open up to the “older/familiar” friends that have been in my life.  Sometimes my brain just takes me back to high school mentality.  I admit it.  I feel like the geek girl trying to break into the “popular girl” clique.  Maybe I should buy a shirt that says, “My BFF just moved…wanna be my friend?”

Or maybe that is overkill.

Or maybe I am just really hard to approach.  I don’t know.

What I do know is that change makes us grow.  This past month I have seen plenty of “growth” to last me for a year.   So, I  am giving a shout out to life….Settle down.  I need to catch my breath.

And?  I’m just asking…wanna be my friend?