Exile.

So, it’s finally happened – i’ve admitted that being in Oakland is really lonely, and I’m willing to do something about it. So, I called/texted 6 East Bay friends tonight to see if they wanted to go to the Saturday night “cool kids” meet up place, and I got 6 denies. It’s okay. I had to read for school and had a pretty awesome day of out&about self-care (the trees are finally turning colors – they look incredible), but I actually took action around it, which was a long awaited step.

I have a few, mainly school, friends here, but most of the friends I consider my closest live in San Francisco – yes, only across a bridge, but that’s an immense distance if you’re on either side of it (It’s like Brooklyn to Manhattan: you likely ain’t gonna make it) – I remember back to times when in SF, venturing to Oakland seemed like crossing Egypt. Which means, if I’m not willing to cross Egypt to hang out with people I know and love, I better get willing to reach out to people on this side of the Nile … Sorry, extended metaphor collapse!

I didn’t really realize it until last weekend at that meditation workshop I went to – which was about relationships with others. I said it out loud in my “hey I’m Molly, this is why I’m here,” and that was one of the things that came out. Being so busy with everything is a good distraction from making friends, and making effort to make friends.

Cuz, that’s what it really boils down to – there are plenty of people out on this side of the Bay – I just have felt petulant to make any new friends, and I have 5 years’ worth of friendships built up in SF, and friendships take work. To form, to grow, to create trust and intimacy, and I just haven’t been available for it since I moved over here – it was just too exhausting to think about “starting over.”

In the beginning, last year, when I still had my car, I made effort to get to the “cool” meet ups, but I didn’t feel any connections (or make effort to go much beyond a few cursory hey how are yas). Then, I had no car, and it was much easier to stay cocooned.

It’s pretty funny, cuz the first thought that I had in the workshop last week which I shared with a friend (as there were two girl friends I hadn’t seen in ages, and just seeing them brought such relief – here are people who know me, who’ve seen me grow and change, as I’ve seen them – it was seeing these friends, feeling that relief, ironically, which made me realize how starved I was for them, and how non-friend-having I’d been over here). So, I say to one of them, that my brain immediately goes, Maybe I should move back to San Francisco.

Of course, the simplest of all answers, Molly! That makes perfect sense! It doesn’t. School is over here, which it’s why I’m over here, “exiled” in the first place. – Just like the “simplest” answer to my punctuality/time problem is to get a car, of course…

The simplest answer is to make friends over here. To admit that it takes effort, and it’s scary, and I still think I come off as terribly uncool around new people. But, it’s that, or me and my cat on Saturday night, and I’m at least cooler than that. Well, not this week, maybe – but I made the effort!

Next Saturday I’ll be in the city modeling in my friend’s fashion show for her non-profit (that’s cool, right?) ;P but the following Saturday, I now have plans with a girl I sort of know to go hang out with the cool people. … in Oakland.