Things I Miss

It’s a sunny Saturday afternoon and I’m rewarding myself with lunch at P.F. Changs after having to deal with a fashion disaster (the whole bootie thing went horribly wrong but that’s for another time). It’s only after I put down my magazine when my food arrives that I look around and realize that something is very wrong.

Almost every other table is filled with women. Two friends and their young children. A group of college girls sans boyfriends. A trio of older women who toast themselves with mojitos. Women laughing and leaning towards each other, confiding, observing, commiserating, gossiping.

I’m alone. More importantly, I am lonely.

I’m happily married living in a fun city with lots to do but I’m without the people who will go to the chick flicks, yoga classes, happy hours and malls with me.

Moving to Portland was a great and necessary thing. I didn’t like living in UT and being unemployed made me like it even less. To finally get a job in a place like Portland was good news all the way around.

Except. Except for the one thing I had that was better there than any of the other places I’ve lived. Girlfriends. Lots of fabulous women of all personalities and interests. I had book club friends, tennis friends, yoga friends, movie friends, and shopping friends. I had 'discuss the same things about our relationships over and over again' friends! And I’m a freaking introvert!

To anyone single who may read this and think I’m a whiner because I’m married I’ll only say that even the best of men cannot (and would not want to) replace good friends. I simply don’t buy that ‘my husband is my best friend’ crap. He may be but do you really want to talk to him about bloating, how you have no eyebrows left but still need to wax every week, your emotional temperature? And does he want to hear it? NO. I won’t go into my beliefs about marital sharing right now but I will say that it is a very wise man who knows that he has his wife’s heart but that she still needs her girls.

So I eat sadly and quickly, pay my check and crack open my fortune cookie. Your judgment is off at this time. Rely on friends. And I really want to cry.

A shout out to some of the best wackiest smartest funniest most caring group of women I’ve ever known: Nicole, MJ, Shuree, Laura, Tina, Jacque, Alisyn, Kristin, Rebecca, Stephanie, Jennifer and Laurie. We have phone, email and FB but it is simply not the same.