Growing Pains

I realized, over the course of the weekend, that I'm just the teensiest bit addicted to the world of Instant Messaging. When most of my friends graduated college, or transferred, or dropped out, or just moved on in some other way, we all turned to IM to stay in touch. But as the years progressed, their old circles of friends were replaced by new ones and chatting with someone was more of a means of catching up, rather than a vital, daily part of their social life.

Not so for me, I guess. After everyone moved away I turned to The Husband, and that was the end of the going out, seeing people...you know the rest. So in my world, the conversations that transpired in the little white boxes on my computer weren't a supplement to social interaction, it WAS my social interaction.

I thought, somehow, that being single again would suddenly usher in a fabulous new world of Sex and The City-esque friends and adventures. I guess I expected to wake up the day after J finally moved out to find a closet full of Chanel dresses and Manolos and a phone address book full of colorful girlfriends and boyfriends and we'd all raise hell and I could make up for the last four years by being carefree and wild and 26 going on 22 for at a little while.

But right...of course...everyone else is 26 going on 27 now, and I hadn't considered that. I laughed over Thanksgiving break when I left messages for a couple of friends to see if they were going to attend the semi-all town get together at one of our city's three bars and they returned with "Um...no one really goes out anymore." Four years. I had forgotten. They grew up and got dogs and mortgages and settled down and I guess I'm still waiting for God to call my number in that respect.

So anyway, I exist in an Internet social world, and I really don't like that at all. I figured out where all this slow-burning anger is coming from, too, when I had my epiphany about the Internet thing. The anger isn't isolated to the one friend who wrote the blog; I'm angry at everyone. I'm furious at the world, and I loathe myself the most for feeling that way. I expect my friends to say the right thing, to extend friendship and comfort and companionship to me when I don't really have much to give back in return. Right now, I'm not the kind of girl people want to be friends with, or men would want to want. I get that. I need to change, and I can't expect that change to happen by osmosis through the dim light of a computer monitor.

As a start, I've decided to delete my all my messengers as an experiment to see if the time and the expectations and the anger I wasted there could be converted into something positive in my real life (such as it is). Maybe I'll reorganize my house, or practice my horn more, or take up a hobby (although the last time I decided to give up the whole Internet cold turkey, I freaked out with major withdrawal and decided to crochet an afghan and I ended up with 129 dusty rose-colored fleurchamps in a tupperware container and no earthly idea how to connect them into a blanket until I got back on the Internet to research it and ended up staying for four hours chatting after I reloaded MSN and Yahoo). Maybe I'll just spend a week dusting my baseboards and decide that's all I really needed to accomplish with my little period of isolation. In any case, I'll be sure to blog every second of my withdrawal bugs and mini-nervous breakdowns and annoying things I realize are rattling around in my head when I don't have someone else to blather to anymore.

And of course, I would still love to hear from all of you by email. Or cell phone. Or blog comment. Or Christmas card. Or messenger pigeon. And if someone DOES break down and decides to get their skank on at the Echoes this Christmas, you know where to find me.