Just Friends?

The hardest part of moving here to England has been making friends. I know that I am not the only one to have uprooted their life recently and jump to a new city or country, but it seems so much harder these days for me to meet and make friends with people that I can consider individuals I trust and want to be around. It has been the hardest thing and it is the thing that is slowly making me question whether I made the right choice: should I have left everything - EVERYTHING - I know behind on some half thought out whim? On an idea of showing someone that my intents were serious, that I can keep a promise, even if that promise means nothing now?

Since I have come here, I feel as though I have walked in at the end of the conversation. I feel as though everyone had their circle of friends, the ones they call on when they need help or just need to talk, the ones who can meet them at the pub on a moment's notice for beer, bravado, and bitter honest advice. But I am not sure I have found that yet. I have no housemates, choosing to live on my own based on personality and circumstance, so no shared space to create a shared bond. I have few family here, even less that are within my age range so that I can comfortably co-opt their friends. I adore my co-workers and consider some of them dear friends, but sometimes, a connection based on shared nine to five roles seems superficial at best, and down right glossy at other times. Like a fortunate accident.

And so I thought I had discovered friends here. Friends with a mutual pursuit but a group that I could find fellow like minded souls within. I thought I was making headway into fitting into, into feeling a part of things, and now I am no longer sure. So many breaks have occurred. So many individuals have either willfully or wrongly misunderstood what I have said. And when I have tried to explain, then where the truth lies emerges. They don't want my explanations, they don't care about my feelings. And i wonder: did I really make the right choice? Why leave all that I was comfortable with because I felt like I was stifling when I know nothing here and I feel like I am dying? Just a bit more everyday.....just a little bit, but I am slowly getting crushed under this.

What does it mean - to be just friends? I have used that phrase in so many situations - to shield myself from scrutiny when I am unsure where my feelings lie about someone else, to conceal all the things that occur that means we are not friends - that we are more and sometimes less. I have heard people use that phrase as a way of placating me, into some false sense of security. I have heard people say those words and turn around and deceive me. And explain it away by saying we are just friends. Does friendship mean so little these days to most and so much to me, that I could come to regret what I thought would be my last flight, that I could start to wish to run anywhere but here, all because I seem to lack the one thing I need.

In the end, I am not sure why I placing so much of my happiness and importance in life on this: on being friends, on having friends. But perhaps, it's because I need someone to turn to right now and that is not anyone for me. I need to talk about so many things in my head and heart and there is not anyone to listen. And I am so afraid that I have completely erred and I have no idea where to go. As I said, I am being crushed by the weight of this. I am being crushed, feeling so all alone and I am being crushed by the lack of understanding. I am lost because I no longer know whom to trust with what I feel and think, and even if I trust them, how much can I truly say? How do I know that like everything else, their friendship is not fleeting. For the first time, I wish I were home. For the first time, I don't consider this my home. And I hope this too passes. I want to be happy here and yet, I am not sure I can be. And I start to wonder yet again: if not here, then is there anywhere for me to find my happiness?