Here’s a topic I don’t talk about often: the confusing, complicated world of friendship. Adult friendships, to be specific.

When you’re young, making friends is easy. All you have to do is find common ground to make a connection. Since you don’t have any big responsibilities, you have all the time in the world to hang out and be dumb together. And being dumb together is (almost) always fun and seems to be the basis of many lasting memories. I had the kind of best friends who I spent hours on the phone with; friends so attached we would talk even while one of us was in the toilet. Those days when you just couldn’t imagine not telling each other every single detail of every single crisis (and back then, EVERYTHING was a crisis).

But then you grow up, your time becomes limited, and you see the number of relationships you want to keep dwindle down to a handful. It’s the natural flow of things – you grow, you change, eventually you maybe don’t have too many things to talk about anymore. Sometimes this happens, and it’s no one’s fault. People outgrow each other.

I will be honest though that through the years, there were some friendships that died because I really didn’t take care of them. That’s the problem with ~collecting~ friends: You end up having too many to really focus on. While you do end up with a lot of connections, not many of them are deep. You spread yourself too thin and you end up taking certain people for granted. Eventually you lose them.

Which is why in the last year or so, I made the conscious decision to really choose which friendships to nurture. I slowly learned to let go of the urge to be somewhere or be with someone just because I wanted to be in the mix. And this is when I learned that a true, deep, loving connection is SO DAMN RARE. This sort of purge showed me that I was not taking care of the connections that I really should have been taking care of.

As the last year went on, I stayed true to my goal of focusing. Being put on bed rest for so many months while pregnant made it easier for me to do so, since I couldn’t go anywhere anyway. I know it’s been beneficial for the handful of friendships that I know will last me a lifetime, and I’m pouring myself out on those. I am less afraid to invest in them because I no longer have the insatiable need to be included in everything.

But lately I’ve been wondering about new friends. I am finding out that while meeting people isn’t really so hard, connecting is a different story. Sometimes, even when you really try, and even when you basically have the same life situation, you just don’t get each other. It doesn’t help either that I can’t offer my physical presence as much as I would like to, not for the next 10 months at least!

Does this mean that the relationships we have in our youth are the only ones that will accompany us to old age? Is it possible to make new, deep friend connections once you’re an adult? With enough time, effort, and shared experience, will you be able to forge new alliances? Is it possible to open up to a new person, and share a vulnerability with them that you only offer to those who you grew up with? I’m not sure. Maybe. Or maybe it’s not something that really happens past a certain age. Either way, what I do hope to do is  continue to take care of the connections that I already have; to water them with all the love, time, and patience that I can give. Right now there’s not a lot I can offer, but hopefully while I am in this stage in life where sleep is a vague reality, it will be enough.