Friends

I posted about this once before; it was my second ever post and I didn’t have any readers then, so I’ll just link here to it.

I’ve been thinking about this friendship thing for sometime. It was nerve wracking moving to Bangkok (for a billion reasons) but making friends was one of the things high on my list to worry about.

I don’t exactly come across as shy – in fact, those that have met me will say ‘no, no, you’re not shy…’ so it has come to my notice over the years that people interpret it as something else entirely. I think it’s just plain shyness, I come from a family of extroverts, but I need time to grow relaxed with people. Clearly though, it isn’t always the way other’s read me.

Once when I was a new first year at university (the first time) I was chatting to a girl called Carole in her room. There was a knock at the door and another first year girl, Michelle, put her head around the door and said “I’m pleased you’re both here.” She then proceeded to tell us exactly what ‘everyone’ in our halls of residence, thought of us.

I was ‘snobbish, unapproachable and formidable’. (Gee, thanks Michelle, I so needed to know all that). I realized later and know now with complete conviction that the problem here was Michelle’s, but still, I’ve let ‘formidable’ haunt me for years, and I still worry that lots of people see me that way.

So I talked in that early post about my anxiety about how to make friends, but although I didn’t feel my natural habitat was a women’s group, I have found friends there.

Then a few months ago, I met a woman at bookcrossing, and she asked about the group I belong to. Rather than go to a big expat women do, I said I’d organize a night out with a couple of lovely women I knew. I invited four or five women, and I asked them to each invite another lovely woman so it would expand my social group too. It’s become informally known as the lovely women or lovely ladies (I prefer woman to lady!) and it’s a different group, though overlapping sometimes, to the women’s group.

Then, of course, there are the bloggers who have to be counted among my friends, not just because I’ve met some of you, but because you have become a hugely important part of my life. Although it’s happening in some new-fangled cyberspace way, (with 6,000 miles of real distance) you are my friends; you are providing the service that real live friends do and for that I am grateful, and I wanted to say thank you.