Friends and food.

So I bet from that title it seems like I'm going to post something about a lovely potluck I attended with friends and the wonderful food I made for it or maybe a nice dinner I made for a friend and then we sat and chatted over our food for hours. Nope. No and you know why? Because I live in a fucking retirement community and everyone here is either old or else I just don't have anything in common with them. Yes, people (and by people I really mean myself, because I don't think I actually have any readers) I am being pathetic and whining about not having any friends. Know what, though? I do not care because that's what's up right now. For a little perspective, when I started this blog I was pretty consistently either baking for a gathering of some sort or making dinner for friends or else just reveling in having the kitchen in my house all to myself. What I found was that I not only loved to cook but that it was a thread that connected me to the people in my life. Fast forward a year or so and things are very different. I've already posted here about how grateful I am to be back in Maryland. How much I disliked living in North Carolina at the end and how sick I became. It's all true of course. I would not trade my life here for anything. But there is one thing that has been very hard to overcome and that is the loss of my network. That soft web of people who held me up and who I hold so dear. They are hundreds of miles away and there is absolutely nothing that can make that hurt less than it does.

I think my Labor Day trip to Miami really put things in stark contrast for me. Or maybe it was starting school that did it. This town where I live, it's where I grew up. I knew what it would be like when I got here. Fear of loneliness is what drove me out of here back in 05 after I graduated college. This time, I knew I needed to be here. This time, I knew that even if I felt lonely sometimes, I need to be in Maryland and, for the moment at least, that meant I needed to be in Chestertown. And a few weeks ago I'd come to some peace about it. I thought, "Hey, I can do this. I like my parents, my co-workers, my two friends. That's plenty, right?" Apparently not. I mean, I love all of those people I just talked about but as I decided when I left Asheville, loving people is not a good enough reason to stay somewhere when it feels like the time has come to move on.

So anyway, I went to Miami at the end of my first week of school to see my best girlfriend for her Blessing Way (it's like a mom-shower instead of a baby shower for pregnant ladies). Our other friend flew in from Asheville. I can't speak for either of them, but to me it felt like no time had passed. Even though we all live in different cities and have for five months now, even though one of us is about to have a baby and one of us is in a serious relationship and one of us is in grad school now. It was like the easiest thing in the world to just hang out and go out to eat and I felt so comforted by their presence. With these two friends in particular, our activities have always been centered around food. Going out to eat, wrecking havoc with our various dietary needs, putting together little meals from healthy tidbits. I could have easily just stayed. But I had to return. And since then every day at school is another reminder of what it is to be young and have friends, peers to share your life with, and then I return to my home which is beginning to feel like exile again.

To me it is in no way a coincidence that my lack of peers has been parallel with my lack of enthusiasm for cooking. Aside from the fact that I don't have my own space and my mom kind of already has meals planned most nights, I just don't have anyone to share my food with. Or maybe it's not even that. I think it could be the simple fact that not having friends is FUCKING DEPRESSING and so doing anything that would normally bring me joy (including school and running) has been a bit gray lately. I don't know what the solution is. Wait, I do. It looks like moving to Baltimore. But that is a solution that takes time and effort and what I really mean is immediate solution. I do know that writing this crap down makes it better somehow, usually. I know that everything has a season and maybe this is just a solitary season for me. Maybe it's the end of a solitary season, one that I know I needed like air this past spring. I'm willing to hang in and trust, these days. In a way that I never was before. But I'm sayin', if I don't get out of this place soon I'm going to start buying orthopedic shoes and polyester pants with elastic waist bands.