The Old and the New

What a weekend. I yearn for one that is not packed with activities, and yet with every busy weekend that passes I do not regret the events that filled my time. The weekend past was so fun, a time to get together with new friends and old... though mostly new.

It's hard to join new circles. I've done it before, to be sure, and yet each time brings new challenges. It's taken me just over two years to join the circle that is Chris' family, and still sometimes I feel so much on the outside. I still hold back. They don't know the whole me, and I don't know whether to be content with that, or saddened.

The same goes for friendship circles. My "hubby" being the social butterfly that he is (two of us in one couple... how scary is that), I find myself being introduced to friends whenever we go out. I'm blessed with a better-than-average knack for pairing up names and faces, and remembering where they work, who they're related to, and occasionally even siblings, so adding another name to the mental database is not hard. What is hard, for me, is making the connection. Will they remember me? Do they know where I work? My siblings? That I don't like chips or orange pop or coconut, that I'd love to break out of the tiny glass universe that is office work and be spontaneous and creative? That I ache to be married, but have left that decision in his hands, His hands, and struggle every day with my impatience? The words are stuck behind my hesitance.

At times I feel so... involved, accepted even; then I'm struck again by the unspoken warning that I'm not really a part, and that my presence is resented. Or maybe not even resented, just... new. And unfamiliar. Uncomfortable, like a new pair of shoes that you have to break in, and once they're just right you don't remember how they were when they were new.

I want to be an old sneaker friend, so I'll take it one step at a time. New shoes are supposed to pinch, I guess.