I have slightly trashed knees. Turns out I’ve been hyperextending them for years! So now I have a slight cartilage issue in that they hurt when I use them too much. I’m forty four and have a long time to live in this body so this is of slight concern. Enter the collagen and the joint supplements and lot of care when I walk.
But right now I’m really feeling my knees because I actually went out two nights this weekend! I went to Vortex with Paul on Friday and then went to an 80s dance night at the local music hall with a mom’s group I joined on Facebook and aside from my stupid knees grinding when I was trying to do squats this morning in BodyPump class, I actually feel like myself more than I have since we left NYC six months ago.
Not only did I go out, but I spent time with new friends! I went for a long hike and pho yesterday and then a shorter walk and a chat over coffee with another friend today and I am starting to actually settle in here and make connections, which feels okay. Like I did it! I moved somewhere and didn’t need a chance encounter at a grocery store to plug into a friend group right when it was forming!
I admit, I did need a lot of Internet. I have met a lot of friends through a Facebook moms’ friend making group. I mean, the loneliness epidemic is real when you have two thousand women signed up for a Facebook group as a solution to dealing with their sense of isolation. And I’ve become more deeply entrenched in two sub-groups of that Facebook group: my speculative fiction book club, and a Moms of Teens spinoff. And through those sub-groups, I feel like I’m making actual small connections every time I meet up with them. Which is how these things are supposed to work, right?
It was that latter group, the Moms of Teens, that I coordinated to go out to the Ardmore Music Hall for 80s night last night, although I had a couple members of the book club show up too. I am a relentless promoter of parties when I’m socializing, and I sold that New Wave night through hard. And even though the DJ was MUCH too young and also did not manage to curate the waves of requests being thrown at him by drunk middle age people (Tiffany is not New Wave), everyone still seemed to have a fantastic time. We all left our houses at least, and went out with other people, and genuinely enjoyed ourselves dancing as a group, knees be damned.
So I have a lot of gratitude and a small amount of pride in how I’ve handled this challenge. I didn’t have my original Los Angeles crew to lean on. I didn’t have Brooklyn Scouts to help me find like-minded parents to connect with. And I still managed to go out and make new friends and coordinate a night out to an 80s dance party less than six months after landing on the Main Line. I still managed to make solid enough connections with people to spend hours in their presence on a regular basis.
And most importantly, I went out dancing two nights in a row this weekend, and I have stamps from two different clubs on my hand still, and I am proud of myself for that. Yes, I am feeling going out today. Yes, going out two nights in a row at 44 is very different than it was at 26. But I did go out two nights in a row to dance parties, and I’m so happy I’m at this point in a whole new city. This transition wasn’t ever going to be easy, but I can at least try to make it more fun.
Jillian's Blog 