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Tuesday, 2 September 2025 15:01I’ve been thinking about my friends a lot lately. I miss them. I barely see the majority of them.
When I bought my house two years ago, I was thrilled at the prospect that I would now be a 1-2 hours’ drive away from most of them, and was looking forward to having them come visit. But that hasn’t come to pass.
In fact, I’ve recently had the painful realization that for all the people I call friend, there’s really just a handful of people in my life that regularly keep in touch with me, and a lot of my relationships with most of my friends are one-sided. Usually it’s me doing the outreach, the checking in, the planning. Not so much the other way around.
Furthermore, when Ethan made the decision to move to Buffalo last year, I chose not to follow him for two reasons: one, we had just bought the house only a year prior, and I was not going to move again. And two, I didn’t want to abandon everyone. I didn’t want to leave the majority of my friends behind and move to a place where I know no one and know nothing about. I didn’t want to start from nothing AGAIN.
But, as time’s gone on, it’s becoming more and more evident that my second reason for staying here is getting flimsier by the day. With most of my friends now parents, the idea of them visiting me, even just an hour away, seems to be an insurmountable problem. And I get it, it’s a lot of logistics and effort to bundle little ones in a car for a drive, even an hour away. Many also have no energy for anything else. And some have made parenting their whole identity and are presently losing what made them a person, like they’re not allowed to have any other interests outside of being a parent, so something as small as a day trip to visit (with or without the kids) comes with a monumental side of guilt.
For me, though, as someone without kids, and will never have kids, losing most of my friends to parenthood makes me feel sad. They simply have no time for me. It’s not really a coincidence that the friends that I still keep in frequent contact with are ones who are also not parents, but also the ones who are 3+ hours away. It’s pretty telling that in the last 2 years I’ve spent more time with people who live multiple hours away (or even a whole country away) than those who live within 90 minutes of me.
It also makes me feel a bit resentful. I lost my 20s largely due to Crohn’s disease; I had to miss a lot of social gatherings and time with friends because I was constantly in pain with flare-ups, in and out of doctor’s offices, hospitals, and bedridden for weeks or months at a stretch. While my friends were enjoying their after-college life, I couldn’t participate. And by the time I finally was healed, put into remission, and graduated college (I was nearly 30), my friends all got married and started settling down, and began getting to the business of starting families. While I was sick, they moved on with their own lives. When I was finally able to party, so to speak, they got it all out of their system. And while I don’t blame my friends for going about their own lives without me, it’s not fucking fair.
I’ve spent my 30s trying to make up for lost time, trying to chase my 20s. And I’ve largely failed at it. I’m not getting that decade of my life back. My friends have moved on, and I must resign myself to do the same. I simply can’t wait until all those kids turn 18 and my friends have their lives back, as it were.
There’s no one to blame, really. I’m not mad at my friends for following their own paths. I can’t expect them to wait up for me. It simply means that I must go my own way and stop chasing a time that I can’t get back, even if one of those potential paths forward means I leave the place where I’ve spent the last two decades of my life behind and start all over again.
When I bought my house two years ago, I was thrilled at the prospect that I would now be a 1-2 hours’ drive away from most of them, and was looking forward to having them come visit. But that hasn’t come to pass.
In fact, I’ve recently had the painful realization that for all the people I call friend, there’s really just a handful of people in my life that regularly keep in touch with me, and a lot of my relationships with most of my friends are one-sided. Usually it’s me doing the outreach, the checking in, the planning. Not so much the other way around.
Furthermore, when Ethan made the decision to move to Buffalo last year, I chose not to follow him for two reasons: one, we had just bought the house only a year prior, and I was not going to move again. And two, I didn’t want to abandon everyone. I didn’t want to leave the majority of my friends behind and move to a place where I know no one and know nothing about. I didn’t want to start from nothing AGAIN.
But, as time’s gone on, it’s becoming more and more evident that my second reason for staying here is getting flimsier by the day. With most of my friends now parents, the idea of them visiting me, even just an hour away, seems to be an insurmountable problem. And I get it, it’s a lot of logistics and effort to bundle little ones in a car for a drive, even an hour away. Many also have no energy for anything else. And some have made parenting their whole identity and are presently losing what made them a person, like they’re not allowed to have any other interests outside of being a parent, so something as small as a day trip to visit (with or without the kids) comes with a monumental side of guilt.
For me, though, as someone without kids, and will never have kids, losing most of my friends to parenthood makes me feel sad. They simply have no time for me. It’s not really a coincidence that the friends that I still keep in frequent contact with are ones who are also not parents, but also the ones who are 3+ hours away. It’s pretty telling that in the last 2 years I’ve spent more time with people who live multiple hours away (or even a whole country away) than those who live within 90 minutes of me.
It also makes me feel a bit resentful. I lost my 20s largely due to Crohn’s disease; I had to miss a lot of social gatherings and time with friends because I was constantly in pain with flare-ups, in and out of doctor’s offices, hospitals, and bedridden for weeks or months at a stretch. While my friends were enjoying their after-college life, I couldn’t participate. And by the time I finally was healed, put into remission, and graduated college (I was nearly 30), my friends all got married and started settling down, and began getting to the business of starting families. While I was sick, they moved on with their own lives. When I was finally able to party, so to speak, they got it all out of their system. And while I don’t blame my friends for going about their own lives without me, it’s not fucking fair.
I’ve spent my 30s trying to make up for lost time, trying to chase my 20s. And I’ve largely failed at it. I’m not getting that decade of my life back. My friends have moved on, and I must resign myself to do the same. I simply can’t wait until all those kids turn 18 and my friends have their lives back, as it were.
There’s no one to blame, really. I’m not mad at my friends for following their own paths. I can’t expect them to wait up for me. It simply means that I must go my own way and stop chasing a time that I can’t get back, even if one of those potential paths forward means I leave the place where I’ve spent the last two decades of my life behind and start all over again.
