Periphery

I feel like I stand on the periphery, typically in conversations, but also more important things too, like friendships and religion. I have likened my state to that of the Fonz on Happy Days. Arthur Fonzarelli was liked by Richie, Ralph, and Potsie, but he was kind of a stand-alone dude, not really a tight part of their circle. Lately I have been thinking about my Fonz status as it concerns friendships and religion.

Even before N came along, I was like this concerning friends or colleagues or acquaintances. I would be in my classroom working and my team members would be sitting across the hall chatting it up and socializing. Occasionally I would join them, but more often than not they would come and interrupt my work, which bothered the heck out of me. When I wanted companionship, I usually found myself seeking out 1 other teacher with whom to converse.

Once N came along and I joined the mom club, I really struggled and still sometimes do with the whole friendship dynamic. It often seems like other moms have much tighter connections that what I have with anyone in particular. And it's not that there aren't lots of gals I think are super; there are almost too many I would love to be more friendly with, but circumstances (as in a small kid, a husband, a house, a busy life) preclude closer friendships. And so I feel on the periphery but I am probably not alone in feeling like this. I simply don't know other women's thoughts.

Maybe I didn't get it out of my system at 11, but a part of me really yearns for a close female attachment, like chit-chatting on the phone or knowing someone else's business like a girlfriend. But the reality is that I don't like talking on the phone all that much, and I rarely have anything of interest to say (and especially if I have to talk to someone multiple times a day). D and I rarely ever talk on the phone. I am always amazed by women who talk to their husbands 2-3 times a day. I guess D and I are totally content with the vacuum of silence that exists between us.

So the weird thing is that lately alot of my mom friends have been "church shopping" and discussing what they've experienced. There is nowhere I feel more on the periphery than with religion. I don't attend services and haven't for many years now, but sometimes I have a strong yearning to just be in a pew in a church. I was brought up Catholic so I was at mass at least 2 times a week for years and years all through elementary/middle school. I don't know that I particularly want the church or just the feeling of home or comfort or routine that it represents. I guess it is kinda like the 11-year-old "I wanna best friend foreva" thing.

After D and I married I attended the most liberal church in our area, and I still left more times than I can count pissed off about some doctrine or another. And despite my issues, I just can't see myself going to a non-Catholic church. Plus, there is D, who made a great sacrifice by agreeing to marry me in a Catholic church, and who would rather have his fingernails pulled out than attend services of any shape, form or fashion. I often "blame" my reluctance to attend services on D, but he is just an easy scapegoat. It's like as a child when a friend called and asked me to do something I didn't want to do. I'd say, "Mom, can I do '"xyz?'" while I spastically nodded my head back and forth so that I wouldn't have to be the "bad guy" to my friends.

So anyway, I'm finding it stranger than fiction to be experiencing the periphery of friendship in combination with the periphery of religion.

I guess that is really life though. I guess it is the human condition to feel like people don't really know you or understand you or that you don't understand your feelings or that you don't understand life and the world and the hereafter. Hence, this is why we seek out friendships and religion. So I seek out those things that should make me feel less alone only to find that in seeking them out they remind me of how alone I am.

Ahhhh, fuck it.