Dear Social Life, It’s Not You, It’s Me.

Ok so the title to this post may make it sound like I’m breaking up with my social life, but honestly it’s nothing that dramatic. I mean, we were barely even dating anyway and by that, I mean I only leave the house for social engagements (lol at how wanky that sounds) once or twice a month. In fact, there’s every possibility that even that’s an overstatement.

Now, it’s not that I don’t have any friends, I do. Very lovely ones in fact. Very lovely ones that I really, truly should be making more of an effort to see. The problem is that the younger me; the one who wouldn’t miss out on a trip to the co-op, let alone the pub, is no more. In fact, I wouldn’t know her if she hit me in the face.

The me I know now is very different.

Not only have I gone from not owning a single pair of flat shoes, to literally watching my heels gather dust (note to self: hoover shoes). But, the only FOMO I experience now, is the fear missing out on a(nother) night of Netflix, slippers, and buckets of tea. And when I say FOMO, I actually mean deep feelings of sofa separation anxiety.

Just when did I become so dull?

I’m fairly certain that being tired approximately 66.33% of the time (i.e. all my waking hours) doesn’t help. By the time the evening comes, I’m more than ready for a hot bath (the kind that scalds), pjs and my dressing gown. And I would say that Chris and I spend our evenings unwinding by chatting about our day and inner most feelings, but we don’t. I actively avoid conversation, by cleverly averting eye contact while scrolling through Instagram.

Heaven forbid I actually interact with another human being face to face.

I like staying home because it’s comfortable. I don’t have to get dressed up. I don’t have to stay up past 9pm and there’s a steady supply of tea, chocolate and blankets. What more could I ask for? If you ask me, it all makes going out sound overrated.

And maybe it is.

But then if I imagine a life of never seeing my friends again and night after night of the same routine, I start to feel a bit sad.

Right now, I’m experiencing a bit of a preoccupation with time. Specifically with how fast it’s slipping away. I feel like I wake up on Monday and by the time I fall asleep, it’s Friday, before blinking and the weekend is over. It’s as though I’m trapped in a VCR and someone pressed fast forward – the days just blur into two squiggly lines.

Days turn into weeks, weeks into months. And then, I realise I’ve not seen the people I bloody love hanging out with once in that time. I mean no one’s THAT busy, are they? There’s always at least one evening a week where I could make the effort to separate myself from my dressing gown for just a few hours. Even if the thought of leaving that scabby rag of fabric behind brings me out in a cold sweat.

The funny thing is that so many of us laugh about how much we’ve learned with age and how naive and stupid our younger selves were. I mean don’t get me wrong, the red hair, wannabe rapper boyfriend and perspex wedges were always a bad idea, but maybe the constant socialising wasn’t.

As life speeds through months, into years and decades, I should make more space in that time for laughter and friendship.

After all, it wont be the dressing gown that I’ll be missing when I’m dead and gone.