Makin' Friends

When I was eleven, my best and only friend in the whole wide world told me she didn't want to be my friend anymore because I had too much imagination.  What she was probably trying to say was, "You don't have very high self esteem and sometimes you annoy me.  I had better end this relationship before it gets too deep, as I don't think you're going to help me socially advance in the world.  You're really more of a dead weight than anything."  I was shocked.  I never knew they could do that.  Suddenly at age eleven, the rules of the game I didn't even know I was playing shifted and I started losing.


This event unleashed about three years of junior high horror.  I was the girl who asked people if I could sit at their table, only to be told no.  Those round white cafeteria tables are immense when you're sitting all alone.  I was the girl who latched on to the new student (who everyone thought was weird and no one wanted to talk to) just because I could finally have a friend to sit with, only to find out she was moving again in a couple of weeks with her nomad father, causing a lump to appear in my throat.  I was the one who latched on to anyone who would take me even if it sometimes resulted in the standard abuse of the third wheel, or (to my great shame) mocked those I thought were weaker than me so that everyone could see I was better than they were.


But what resulted long term was a fairly tough girl with a soft spot for the underdog.  Who doesn't have a story like this?  This was not the end of my trials, as I've moved around a lot and found myself at a loss for companionship several times.  I changed high schools senior year (college was a breeze as we were all in the same boat), studied abroad, moved to Taiwan with a group of expats for a year, moved to New York, moved back to Taiwan, moved to Paris, moved back to New York, got married and moved to Africa (Somaliland, then Djibouti, then Kenya, then Somaliland), then back to New York, then to France where we finally bought our house after living in two apartments in two different cities.  Do you see a pattern here?  We're finally in a place where we'll be putting some roots down.


But it's exceptionally hard to make friends here.


In the last apartment I lived in, we were in the heart of La Defense.  For those who know Paris, there's the Grande Arche de la Defense, which is parallel with the Arc de Triomphe.  You can see the one in perfect symmetry by standing under the other.  We lived a five minute walk from there and it was teeming with life.  Young Lady's school was in the bottom of our apartment building (so I could literally take the elevator down in my pajamas) and Big Boy's nursery was across the street.  There was a park in an easy walk with no busy streets in between (a rarity in La Defense), and all the mothers congregated there.  We would see each other in the elevator, in the park, in the school and we couldn't help but be friends.  It helped a lot that most of them were foreigners like me - Algerian, Iranian, Lebanese, Indian, Sudanese - they were all as eager to like and be liked as I was.  As I am quite gregarious, I was often the center of the circle, gaily laughing away my woes, pulling the stragglers in so they would feel included.  It was all so simple.


But here!  All the women are so french!  (Please don't get me wrong - I love the French.  I married one.  And yet ...)  Young Lady's teacher assumed I was the nanny when I went to pick her up on the first day, despite the fact that she is a spitting image of me.  It could have been the fact that I look someone who eats away the day minding kids.  Years of anti-depressants, three pregnancies and too much chocolate has seen to that glorious image (and I used to be so swanky in New York! well, not really, but skinnier).  I always show up at school  with dusty clothes, which I can't get truly clean until we're done with this infernal construction.  I don't resemble any of the moms who are there with tiny butts in tiny jeans and high heels and Gucci belts and little bags and svelte coats, holding an infant that they just popped out the week before.  I'm the bull in the china shop.


And when I try the confident route and pull up to groups who are all chatting away because I happened to have a conversation with one of them and "kinda know them," they do their best to ignore me (as if you can ignore a bull in a china shop) and carry on with their conversation.  So I do what I've always done.  I pull back.  I make conversation with other loners like me.  I laugh to myself that someone should look at me so askance just because I come up all friendly and American and say that our daughters are best friends and why not set up a play date sometime soon.  Don't pity me.  Most of the time I find such banality amusing.  And I've got plenty of friends from the anglo moms group, from church (they have to like me because the Bible tells them to), from my old neighborhood where they still receive me with open arms and kisses on both cheeks, from college, from New York, from Africa, from Taiwan even.


And yet, it would be nice to have some friends around where I live.


PS... I'm linking up with MamaKat's writing workshop because she has lots of great ideas that I'm going to be looking out for in my dry, dull blogging days.  This one is about an underdog that I know.  Me!  Okay, okay - not present tense me.  Eleven year old me.