Making friends and building friendships as an adult is tough. Even more so when you move to a new country and you don’t speak the language. It’s also incredibly exhausting. Meeting loads of different people just to try and find people that you can be yourself around, people that you can trust, is hard work.
In the past year I’ve made much more of an effort to make friends. It can be incredibly lonely when you don’t have that extra support system. I’ve met some wonderful people and made some good friends BUT everyone seems to leave.
A lot of people that I’ve met in the past year have left the country to go back home or move on to their next destination. This is where I struggle. These people invariably end up being the people that I really click with. The people that I could see myself forming lifelong friendships with. Even with technology being what it is, it’s still difficult to keep up with friendships on the other side of the world (especially when they’re not only in Europe where travelling is easier and cheaper).
There’s also the reality that sometimes that’s all people are looking for. Where I’m looking for lifelong friends, some people just want friends to hang out with while they’re in town and the minute they leave town they don’t look back. Don’t get me wrong, that’s absolutely fine but it would be nice going into the friendship so that I don’t get too attached to the friendship that we’ve created. That’s happened to me this year and let me tell you, it wasn’t fun. Losing friends is never easy but it’s not having closure that kills me. I guess that I just struggle with the fact that one day you can be friends with someone and the next day they decide you’re not friends anymore and that’s the last you hear from them. That doesn’t seem normal to me. Or maybe that’s just my anxious, overthinking brain at work again.
When I moved to Poland it was tough keeping up with all of my friendships back home. I tried my best but sometimes that doesn’t seem to be good enough either. People move on – out of sight, out of mind – and no amount of pushing is going to change that. I don’t like giving up on friendships but at the end of the day, you can’t be the only one trying. Now, I’m not saying that I’ve been the best at this. I’ve also had my struggles and I am trying to work on this, to be a better friend. However, in certain cases I’ve definitely tried without much success from the other side.
Making friendships is exhausting but I’m not giving up hope. Like I said, I’ve made a couple of good friends, and maybe I just need to look a little longer to find that one person here that I can call my person.
Keep up the good work.