girlfriends

i know i'm not the only one because i had this conversation with the girlfriends i accompanied to quelquepart island: why is it so hard for girls to make new friends?

ugh. because it sounds weird when you ask another girl for her phone number. even if it is someone from work with whom you're on pretty comfortable terms, it's still hard to ask for a phone number. even though obviously you just want to be friends with the person.

basically, it feels weird to ask another girl for her phone number because one doesn't want her to think one is trying to hit on her completely irrational thought, i know, but that's the base of it.

making friends shouldn't be thought of analogously to making dates. so when you're asking a friend for her phone number, it should be assumed you're making a friend, and have no "other" motives.

it's kind of sick that we even have to worry about that kind of thought-interference. and i know i don't worry about it just because i was made fun of in high school (i think freshman year i still dressed a bit like a tomboy and refused to wear a padded bra - thus making me look like hillary swank in "boys don't cry.") because other people have expressed similar anxieties to me.

i hope i made a new friend today - i had to go through the above anxiety (what if she thinks i'm stalking her?) today with one of the girls i work with, since today was my last day at school until august and it DEFINITELY seems stalker-ish to look up someone's phone number in the staff database. she's a lot of fun and told me that the gym teacher occasionally makes magic brownies.

good LAWD the things on your mind when you don't have to worry about boys!


*************
a former girlfriend of mine recently got married (oh! and pregnant). i say former because i was not invited to the wedding and it has been probably a year since we have spoken. and it's not because she did anything that i stopped talking to her; sometimes, with some people, things just stop, ready to resume whenever one person picks up the phone. but at that time i did realize that she was one of my malleable friends, she was someone i could use. any time i had a craving for chocolate chip pancakes at IHOP and was pretty sure JCP wouldn't meet me, i would call this other friend because i KNEW that she would always go along with me, or if she was already doing something, would try to work me in. looking back on that now, i don't know why i found something wrong with that attitude; it's nice to have friends you can hang out with whenever. but anyway, i still stand by my distaste at being able to change her mind or convince her of anything (except of my philosophy of salsa dancing, which she swore depended on being thin and beautiful. no - it only depends on being female and being unaccompanied on the dance floor)

i am happy for her that she's pregnant. the marriage thing is not really important for me because i think i'm part of the group that doesn't buy the marriage bullshit anymore - the "you have to get married before you're thirty, make sure he gets you a big diamond from the mall for your engagement, make sure everything for the wedding is just-so, and we'll be happily ever after, la la la la la!" bullshit.

i found out the preggers part from a friend - who told me that the couple didn't want anyone to know, ESPECIALLY (ie, they pointed her out by name) the person who broke the news to me. i've begun to feel that the couple is obsessed with this person and no matter how much the person has moved on with her own life and forgotten the couple, she will still be the ghost in the corner. that makes me question the "adult-ness" of their relationship that marriage is supposed to symbolize.

i think it might be endemic to the male part of the couple - during his first marriage, the person mentioned above was an issue also! his then wife was always making a big deal, whenever she spoke to me, about "oh i don't want you to feel like you're in the middle BUT..."

if that person is reading this now, i think he is obsessed with you!