No Friends
On the challenge of making friends beyond the age of thirty.
There is a place, often unnoticed, though it's been in your peripheral vision countless times. You've been there yourself, but those moments have faded into the recesses of your memory. You've disregarded it for years until something specific occurs in your life, and boom: you know everything about it. All at once, you become acquainted with the local crowd, establish your favorites, prioritize the clean and the safe while steering clear of those exuding sadness. This place I speak of is called the Playground.
The day your little one takes their first step, the playgrounds in your vicinity seem to magically materialize in your inner eye. You can't help but notice them, even when you're in other cities, traveling without them.
Playgrounds witness an array of happenings. At times, they help confirm the wisdom of your choice in a partner when you find yourselves both not liking the same parents. Yet, what's most revealing is their ability to let us observe how children interact with one another. The other day, I overheard one child asking another for their name. The next question was, "Do you want to be my friend?" The child replied with a resounding "yes," and off they went, hand in hand, to play The Floor Is Lava, leaving a trail of scattered sand in their wake.
These children may not have their ID numbers memorized, but they know how to ask and answer a question I wouldn't dare to pose.
From adolescence well into my mid-twenties, a significant portion of my internal struggles revolved around cultivating a healthy love relationship. I've been in a partnership for nearly eight years now, and sometimes, secretly, I still feel like I've cheated the system. I maintain that learning to give and receive love was the result of hacking into the life's program meant for me. Now that I've achieved it, new battles have emerged, particularly in my quest for equally wholesome bonds of friendship.
I know there are people out there who care for me, who would speak kind words at my funeral. A few reach out when something significant happens, and I know I could do the same. Some enjoy having me at their dinners (not their parties—no one wants someone lounging on the couch playing Wordle at their parties). In this sense, I am a functional friend. From the outside, you would never be surprised by my ease in friendship.
The feeling comes from within. I've noticed that growing up doesn't necessarily make us wiser; if anything, it makes us accumulate fears, eye twitches, and resentment. And what growing up definitely makes more challenging is accumulating friends. Now I believe that forming new friendships after thirty is akin to hacking the system, just as I did to find love.
There are years when making friends happens constantly. From the moment our parents wave goodbye on the first day of school until the end of our twenties, we are like birds soaring with wings wide open in a sea of plenty. We come together, drift apart, join groups, despise them, move continents, get the same circle tattooed on our arms in Thailand, send angry emails with bullet points clarifying what friendship truly means to us.
During those years, it seems like the possibilities of entering the lives of new people are endless. Life is for us; we are at the center of the board. And in the blink of an eye, thirty arrives. We breathe a sigh of relief because we've been caught with life on track: we have a stable partner, and we've found our vocation. But what comes as a surprise is that alongside the slowing production of collagen, there's something else that slows down: the possibility of forging new, solid friendships.