27 june 2021
We've only just cooled down from the heatwave we've been having in my area, but now it sounds like the Pacific Northwest is getting it even worse than we did. In Tacoma it's expected to spike past 120 degrees Fahrenheit, which is a nightmare under any circumstances, but happening in Washington state, it seems like a bad omen. Dead birds falling out of red skies, and people standing below desperately trying to read their entrails.
A friend is down visiting from Seattle today, the first time my spouse and I have had a visitor in over a year. It was good to see her. The rest of that friend group sort of ghosted us after she moved. Although we didn't make that much effort either, so maybe they think we ghosted them.
More than a year in relative solitude has left me feeling weird, resigned in a way I didn't necessarily expect. It was good to see our friend, but in the end I'm not expecting much from my future, I guess. Long term I don't know that I expect my social life to get better in any measurable way, and maybe being lonely is the natural end I fall into. As I get older I begin to feel like new things are out of reach. That magic of meeting someone and becoming Best Friends has felt like a dead art since I left school. We talked a little bit about it today, how making friends feels less and less possible as we age, and everyone already has their existing cliques that have been together forever. Seattle's famous freeze is rooted in that, but it exists everywhere. New friends are wild cards, and they're work, and nobody wants them unless they find themselves lacking.
It's a tricky problem, maybe an unsolvable problem. I made my best friends in university clubs and group chats and forums and social media. Some of those things are out of reach now, and others feel strange, foreign, awkward. I feel trapped in a liminal space. If I'm honest I've felt trapped for a long time. But like a wild-caught parrot, maybe I've learned to like my captivity, or at least mistake it for comfort.