So I got a new purse on Saturday at Macy's for half-price. The funny thing is I hadn't planned on going shopping outside of my house on Thanksgiving weekend but my mom wanted to go to the new Ihop and to the mall to see if they had something sparkly for her to wear for the Christmas musical at church. Who am I to turn down a free meal involving all you can eat pancakes and shopping? Anyways, this particular purse has a little story behind it.
I walked over to the purse section and saw a shiny ocean blue Nine West handbag. I picked it up to admire it and then saw that it was on sale as part of a morning special that would end at 1pm. "Is this bag really half-price?", I said out loud because I really couldn't believe it. Then an adorable woman pushing her toddler around in a stroller at the table of purses next to me said, "Yeah they really are can you believe it?" and flashed me the friendliest smile I've seen in a long time. For about 5 minutes we were the best of friends talking about our favorite handbag brands and the crazy deals that we've found in the past on QVC. We both fell in love with the same purse in the same color and decided that we simply couldn't leave the store without it. She went her way with her son and her purse and I went my way with mine and that was the end of our relationship but I will think of her everytime I use this bag.
I never realized how starved I was for friendship until I met this woman. It felt so good to make a connection to someone I was on cloud 9 for the rest of the day. It's hard to make friends once you leave school. College was great because there was a whole campus full of potential friendships and living in such close proximity in the dorms made it nearly impossible not to make some kind of connection with people. I cultivated lifelong friendships there but when I left and moved back home I found it hard to make friends. My childhood and high school friends were either married or moved away so I didn't really know where I fit in. Four years later when I moved 2 hours away for a job I was able to make friends at work because several of us started at the same time so we spent a lot of time together in training and relationships naturally formed out of that.
Moving back home again has been hard because now I really don't know where I fit in. It's not as easy to make friends when your older. You try and put yourself out there by sitting in the breakroom at work smiling like an idiot hoping someone will take pity on you and sit at your table or you join a spin class and hope that the conversation you struck up with the sweaty person next to you will amount to much more. It's kind of like dating. If you are lucky enough to get an invite to a party or some Friday night outing you still feel the need to buy a new outfit and get your hair done just as if you going out on a date with some guy you've been crushing on for months. You get nervous wondering what you'll talk about over dinner and hope you have more in common than whatever the one thing is that caused you to start talking in the first place.
I still daydream about one day bumping into some fabulous girl and becoming her equally fabulous friend and we would be besties who see all the popular movies together, try out all the new restaurants as soon as they open up, vacation at luxurious hotspots, and call eachother to have a running commentary while watching our favorite reality tv shows. Ok, honestly if they lived closer I already have friends this fabulous but the only one who could afford my dream is probably Beyonce or Selena Gomez so I should probably think a little more realistically but honestly when have I ever done that?
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