Short timer

Although we have no prospective buyers for our house, we have been starting to sort through all of our possessions in preparation to eventually move. We really have only started with James' specific items, since he will be packing up and moving ahead of Aidan and me to New York. I am waiting until he has left to launch a full-scale attack on the closets in the house.

In the meantime, I did some email contacts clean up this past week. It was liberating and sobering all at the time to delete from my contacts those people located locally with whom I tried to form a friendship, but failed miserably. I was amazed at how many names I deleted, names of people with whom I thought would become friends. I was astoundingly wrong in so, so many cases.

When I do leave here, there is probably only one person with whom I will keep in contact and whom I consider to be a friend. Four years in Georgia and just one friend, and a few good acquaintances. Sad.

Living here has dealt a severe blow to my self-esteem. I have never had any difficulty making or keeping friends wherever I have lived. I have gone out of my way here to seek out potential friends, to get together with them, to share interests...but in every case except the one, I have been rebuffed.

It is impossible for me to not take it personally and wonder what is wrong with me, why people here do not like me. I am no closer to an answer now than when I first started asking why. What is it that I am lacking? Do I live in the wrong neighborhood, drive the wrong car, look or sound the wrong way? Is it my opinions, my politics, my tastes, my clothes? Is it that I am not enough or, as I suspect, too much?

So I guess I don't care anymore. I have mentally checked out of Hooter County Georgia and am merely occupying space until I can get where I belong and where I can make some friends. In some ways, a weight has been lifted from my shoulders: I no longer care whether I meet people I like nor do I care if they like me. After all, I am just a short timer.