2019 in review: Friendships

2019 was a big year friendship-wise for both me and Artemis. I lost my best mate at the start of the year and that hurt for an embarrassingly long time. Embarrassing because I clearly cared more about that relationship than it warranted. The love wasn’t mutual.

Compounding that, Artemis started primary school at the same time I had my surgery, leaving me out of commission for all those getting-to-know-you parent events. 
I wouldn’t have thought it’d matter, but it severely impacted my ability to make connections. I struggled to remember who was who, and when I did start doing birthday parties I was already on the outer, unable to break in with my incompetent social skills.

Artemis has a similar story. She surprised me with her shyness at the beginning of the year. Overwhelmed, she chose to eat recess and lunch alone for months, and by the time she was ready to connect to the other kids they already had groups they were apart of.

Then Star Shadow invited me to join her book club. We’d made friends simply because she’d followed me home one time. I thought the friendship had died when I learned she works for the church and she discovered I’m a witch. She dropped off the face of the earth for a while immediately thereafter, but it turned out she was just busy. Our kids made friends on the bus one arvo, and next thing I knew we were hanging at her place for a playdate and I was officially a member of her book club.

Great, right? The first month I was lucky enough to have already read the book. Circe. My sort of thing. I went and even though it was crowded and loud I had a great time. The following months I read the books but couldn’t make it to book club. I was disappointed because the books are ONLY discussed on the night. We don’t talk about them in group chat, so if you miss the meet then you read a book you might have hated for no reason.

As the year progressed the books got weirder and more depressing. One of those I video reviewed over on Facebook. It was so full-on it made me want to hurt myself, I was messed up for days. Yet the ladies at book club seemed to love it and the discussion it churned left me feeling like an alien.

If that wasn’t enough, two of the books were openly scorned for being “too YA”. They weren’t YA. Not remotely. One was about a mother of two kids cheating on her husband with her true love, and the other was super depressive rapey book mentioned before. Of course, YA has a soft spot in my heart so the idea YA books are below them stung a bit. 50% of the YA audience are adults. Ain’t nothing wrong with YA!

Anyway, we read a book where it was just a new mum talking about her son’s dick and judging everyone else, and I was like “do I even bother with book club anymore?”

I didn’t read November’s book, I’m busy then anyway, and December’s event was a pot-luck. I ummed and erred about going but Star Shadow cornered me at school pick-up. “You’re coming tonight, right? You have to come.”
Well, mate, I do now! I’m obviously not sick or injured or otherwise unable.

So I went. 

And I loved it.

Everyone went out of their way to include everyone else. The conversation was lively and one of the ladies even wrote a poem and read it out to us. Nobody mocked her.  The attendees of each meet had voted on that month’s books and the results were in!
And that’s when I found out that these other women, these wealthy, predominately white, straight women who get tutors for their kindergartener’s reading and notice the weave of each other’s clothes, they’re just like me. When it comes to books anyway. 

The books I hated fell to the bottom of the list and the one fantasy book we’d read was this year’s winner. I’d thought that these women were all so much smarter than me they could enjoy all these high brow literary works that I couldn’t grasp the point of, but no, their tastes aligned with mine (disdain for YA aside).

We laughed and stayed late even though it was a school night. You’ve got to show up and put yourself out there, even though it’s hard. Even if you might spend most of the time standing awkwardly off to the side. You can’t make connections if you don’t try. Artemis and I are learning this one together.

On the weekend she tried to back out of her friend’s party. I’m like “Don’t you like Cane anymore?” and she was like “I love Cane I’m just scared to go.” 

Me too, darling. Me too.

There’s another thing this ties into as well; the “I’m not like other girls” trope. I talk a bit about being different and looking for my tribe in the free book you get from signing up to my newsletter and I know on many many levels I’m not normal. Not even close. But that doesn’t mean I can’t relate to other women, can’t hang out with them, befriend them, and have a great time with them. It’s a big subject I don’t have time for tonight, but there’s the seed. These are my thoughts. My year-in-review.

How have your friendships changed this year?

Miriam Cumming is tired and wants to go watch Star Trek with her husband. She’s not writing a bio tonight. If you want to know Miriam better, follow her on Instagram, Facebook or send her an email and say hi. Please do not include dick pics in your email, it’s not as impressive as you think it is.