It’s been two years since we moved from Ohio to Massachusetts. I have found a few incredible friends – supportive and kind and funny. But they all are from here and have deep roots and extensive support systems. Meanwhile, I️ feel like I’m cobbling together a tiny handful of people to be a support system.
One of my biggest dilemmas lately is how to share the reality of my history with new people in my life. If I don’t know how to tell a new friend about my losses, I feel like they don’t fully know ME and I can’t be as close to them. But I️ can’t figure out how to share it. I️ suppose if I️ was on Facebook again that might do the telling for me?
I️ worked hard to reach out when we first moved, but that petered out after I️ went through a traumatic pregnancy loss moving company.. Now my new friends are all “grief friends.” Which sounds more depressing than it really is.
I’m really proud of myself for being able to reach out and cultivate new relationships, especially when it’s been such a difficult, tumultuous time for me. I went through life-upending loss and grief within my first year of living in a new state. Which is no small feat to survive, let alone come out with relationships. It brought me closer to some people, but more distant to others.
Anyway, I’m lucky to have made a few friends here, but I also really really miss my old friends in Ohio. Two years and 600 miles apart makes relationships hard to maintain. I wish I could go back to Ohio more. I wish I could afford to fly more. I wish a job didn’t have to dictate where we live.
I love where we live and I love Ohio and I just wish everything could be in the same place. I distinctly remember having this same feeling when I was living in Thailand in middle school – I just wanted to mash up Ohio and Thailand and have all the people and places I loved in the same place.
In sum, moving is hard and stupid and isolating, but there are lovely people everywhere.
Thank you—moved 6 weeks ago and am struggling to find my way. My husband has the job with colleagues and travel, I’m wondering what my place is/will be. It is hard and it’s nice to know I’m not alone.
Moving is so hard. You’re not alone.
I can only imagine how hard it is! For the last 12 years I’ve lived within the same 60 mile radius – which sounds kind of far, but isn’t really, given how the area between Richmond and Fredericksburg, Va., sort of represents one large commuter zone. I’d love to move somewhere (Looking at you, Charleston, S.C.), but the network of support, along with jobs (details!) makes that a hard decision.
Making friends as an adult is so hard and so weird. I’ve also endured loss that has shaped me right to my very core, and I have a hard time recognizing when it’s appropriate to come out with it around new friends. So I identify with what you’re saying. It feels like such a huge part of me, and if my friends don’t know that, they don’t really understand what makes me tick. What often ends up happening is eventually a new-ish friend will ask a question about my family (“Where do your parents live?” or “Are you close with your family?”) and I awkwardly grimace and say, “Umm, they both died.” This inevitably leads to a follow-up question: “Do you have brothers and sisters?” and I then have to laugh nervously and say, “Yes, but I only speak to one of them. It’s a long, complicated story.” Yikes. It always leaves me feeling awkward and DIFFERENT and like I’ve somehow divulged too much even though they asked.
TL;DR: I feel ya. There’s no graceful way to come out with it, it seems. Hugs to you.
So glad you are posting again! Moving IS HARD but I look back on the years when I lived in another state when my babies were young and those were my best years so far. Moving challenged me to grow and try all kinds of new things.
I totally think it can be a very very good thing for a family!
I’ve said that too — if I could pick up my life HERE and move it HOME (Pgh), that would be just perfect. But same with the job not being able to move. And everyone here seems to be FROM here and are not interested in finding new friends — they have Their People for barbecues and holidays and such. It does suck.
Yes, I totally get that – they have their people and I’m trying to squeeze myself in.
We moved around a lot, too, and I always said that I wished I could just scoop up certain people and put them in my pocket to keep. It is hard.
I can relate to this so much. I’ve been in the US for 10+ years now, mostly in the same place, but I still don’t feel that I have the support system that I had in Germany (for many reasons)… and then I’ve often befriended people that moved away and I had to start all over again. It’s exhausting, and it’s even more exhausting if there is a hard part of your life which is hard to share with new people. You want them to know all of you, but you also don’t want to ‘burden’ a fresh relationship with heavy topics (but then again, don’t we all carry heavy topics around? I am sure we all do!)
Many hugs. Also, why aren’t Germany and California closer? Or Massachusetts and California for that matter.
It’s hard to always feel like an outsider!
<3
I’m so sorry for your loss, I totally get your situation with your move and being in a, almost foreign, different place with a different social environment. I moved for a couple of years to a different country to study medicine and had very few friends that even remotely were similar to my situation.
From my experience, moving is Always hard. Even when you are looking forward to moving.