Seeking One “Down” Friend

At the ripe old age of thirty, it appears I am missing something. In the past few years, since I lived in New York, there’s been a dark hole in my soul, that gets wider and wider with each passing year. It’s become impossible to ignore it. This tiny black dot in the colorful painting of life, has steadily grown into a giant blob that distorts the entire, gorgeous, picture. I cannot continue to live this way. I seriously need to acquire a down friend.

You know what I mean, right? A “down” friend. A friend who’s down for whatever. For instance, it’s a Wednesday night and it’s been a shitty, blah week. You call up your friend and say, “drinks? Half an hour?” and the friend goes, “yeah, I’m down.” Or maybe it’s “tickets to a play tomorrow night?”, or even “my house for dorritos and tanning”? Or “spontaneous lunch”? Doesn’t matter, you see, because whatever it is, your friend is always down for it. They are cool just to chill and talk about non-issues, and usually ends in laughter. That’s what I’m missing.

In high school, there was no end to down friends. In fact, I had so many down friends, I had to start scheduling shifts. I did one weekend, per down friend. Or sometimes, group down friend activities. In college, the group got smaller, but they were even MORE down, if that’s possible. Anything to stop studying. Then after college, there was a period when I held “down” friend auditions. Though the process was arduous, I managed to scrape up a few good ones, and my sanity was securely in tact.

But ever since I moved to Kingston, my “down” friend bank dried up. Sure, I have perfectly nice friends, with full lives, and (more unfortunately), full-time jobs. They are glad to see me “sometime soon”, and even excited to get together for lunch once every three months. It’s so great to have these friends, and I certainly wish we could spend more time together, but that’s not really the point we are at in our lives. Right now, my friends have entered the “nesting” phase. They are tending to their homes, husbands and babies. There is so little time for anything outside of that, and I totally understand.

What you’re saying is probably: don’t you have a home and husband to tend to, Amanda?

The answer is yes and no. Basically, my home is not that demanding and my husband has so many hobbies and such a active social life (can you believe he is plum FLUSH with ‘down’ friends at this phase in his life?), that I find myself, most nights, on my own, watching TV series on Couchtuner.eu. Well, I’m on my last series right now, and feeling like that dark blob is about to swallow me.

I need a new “down” friend! Preferably one that doesn’t exhaust me. Preferably one that is really funny and gets me. (I realize I’m making an unreasonable request, considering the handful of people who have ever GOTTEN me in….like…life). Every day that I live, the blob gets bigger and one day it’s going to swallow me up into an abyss where I won’t even have the memory of a “down” friend to cling to. And really, my husband tries to include me. I simply don’t share his love of guns or shooting….things? And when he goes out with his friends on a Friday night, I’m pretty sure they would all hate for me to tag along. (That’s really their friend time, I respect that). It’s just that, every day that goes by, with me living in this country without a “down” friend, I ache for New York. I can practically smell my apartment. When I close my eyes, I can taste the pizza. I can feel the scarves around my neck. Because that’s a city filled with friends who are down for me, and that’s all I really want right now.

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