It can be surprisingly hard to meet people in New York, despite the millions of people living here. Add to that the specificity of wanting to find parents, and even better parents with kids around the same age as yours
and who I would want to be friends with regardless of having kids, it can feel close to impossible. Since moving to the city, my circle of friends basically revolved around who I was working with. My coworkers were the people I spent all day with anyways, we had similar interests, and it was nice to commiserate with them after a long week of teaching. Since having a baby, though, I've noticed these friendships have drifted away. It actually didn't even start once I was on maternity leave or when I stopped working in July; I noticed it when I first shared that I was pregnant almost a year prior. I wasn't invited out as often, and when I was invited and did go (usually out to bars or late dinners), I was the first to leave. It was the start of me realizing just how superficial our friendships were in the first place. They were a friendships of convenience, more than anything else. Don't get me wrong--I still have a few people I'm quite close with now, post-baby, but they have kids and we're probably still friends now because of that.
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| Right now, these cool cats are my BFFs. |
It only bothers me sometimes that we don't have a huge circle of friends down here. I recognize that a huge part of it is my own fault, knowing that living in NYC isn't permanent and knowing that it will be hard to maintain friendships once we move. At the same time, during the week when S is working and I'm home with E, I often find myself wishing I had a neighbor friend in our building with a baby around E's age who I could hang out with every day. I've chatted up other moms on the playground or in the playgroup we're in, but...I dunno. The conversations revolve around our babies (usually in a competitive "what does your baby do, wow my baby is more awesome than yours" way), not us, and even when they do come back to us, I fall back onto my 16-year old awkward, nerdy self who makes corny jokes and isn't hip enough to keep up with the cool moms.
So I ask...where is my NYC bestie? How do I meet her? She has to basically be me, but cooler, and want to have a nerdy friend like myself...bonus points if she stays at home with her baby who's the same age as E and lives in our neighborhood so we can push the babies in their strollers while we sip our coffees as we walk through the park.
xoxo
