Hello All,

I hope all is well. As for me, not so much.

I’m 38 and have no friends. Most of my friends are in NYC and I’ve been to school with them including 2 of my best friends and some friends I made in MD from college, but we haven’t spoken much since they graduated. As for having friends in MD, I’ve made some through work and they’ve came and gone but there was one of them that was cool and we hung out together all of the time. She would come by my house and my grandmother would cook dinner, and other times I would go by her house and hangout. Then years rolled by and I haven’t heard from her until 6 years ago when we reunited and she told me that the time where I was living with my grandmother, she asked for me and my grandmother told her not to come back to the house anymore. She hasn’t told me a thing about it since then but she knew my grandmother had dementia. I asked her, “why didn’t you call me and say something”? Her reply? “I was showing your grandmother respect by not coming around anymore”. I was shocked, hurt and angry in one.

Jump forward to 2019, I made a good friend through a depression/anxiety program and I was so glad that things were going good. We hung out together, went out to eat and sometimes walked Downtown and did some sightseeing. Then I moved an hour away from where she lived and told her I was gonna keep in touch. I did kept in touch with her, even through the early stages of the pandemic, and that was when I was going through some rough patches from 2020-2022. Last year, I called her to catch up. I got a message saying her number was no longer in service. Then I managed to send her a message through facebook messenger and she never replied but she was active on her profile as she shared someone else’s post. That hurt me so much. So, I’m friendless in MD.

At 38, I find it difficult to make friends as well as bringing new people around. I do have a significant other but he lives 2 hours away from me and he can’t always be there. My weekends consists of staying home watching TV, cleaning my house and ordering DoorDash, then when Monday rolls around, I go back to work all the way through Friday, and I’m back to the same mundane weekend routine. Hell, the teachers and staff at my job hangs out outside of work and I tend to be social with my coworkers but no one seems interested in wanting to get to know me or my personal interests and hobbies, so I don’t bother. They all act as if I’m this horrible person or have some type of disease or something and that’s not right. My older cousin works at the same place I work and I talk to her whenever I get a chance to.

I know, I know. I’m too old to be worrying about not having friends and so on and so on, but it’s lonesome. It’s not like I can just jump in my car and drive 2 hours to see my boyfriend or NYC to see my best friends every weekend. They all have lives, and I don’t want to disrupt what they have going on.

Sometimes, I wonder what it was that I’ve done or what was it that I said that would make people stop talking to me, and the answer is absolutely nothing. It makes me feel so bad like I’ve gotten hit by a Mack truck, and the constant general low feeling. I’m the type of person who values a friendship. I give you your space and I respect boundaries but when I don’t hear from a friend once in a while, it’s bothersome. I spoke with my therapist last year and she told me that I’m an internalist who internalizes everything. She also said that I suffer from social isolation.

I don’t know what to do anymore.

Women of Maryland 🦀