Pretend Friends

I should be in bed but I need to write. I have been pondering lately about the nature of my online friendships and if the fact that the friends that I spend the most time with them makes me pathetic or not. I am a recluse by nature and love my alone time (this has been a bit tricky for me since I got married and had kids) so it is hard for me to keep up on real live friendships. Growing up my friends were friends of convience. I never really keep friends more than a year at a time. I would pick one or two out from my class and hang with them during the school year but once summer came I was a homebody and spent a lot of time reading alone in my room.

Now that I am an adult and summers of reading alone in my room are no more (sigh) my real life friendships are even more spotty and sparse. My online friends however have stuck with me. I have one that I have known for over five years. That boggels my mind. I have never before had a person that I talked to on a regular basis for that long. She has stuck with me through my marriage, several moves and me having kids. Her wisdom has kept me from killing my husband and she has given me many tips on raising kids. She is a great older mentor to a young crazy mother.

I have other women on my buddy lists that also have helped me through tough times. Often these conversations happen late at night when the kids are in bed and we should be also. But it is soo nice to be talking with another adult that you keep typing away. I could never do that with a real live friend because the people I hang with go to bed early like sane people. In fact as I started typing this paragraph one of my good friends came on and it is 1 am where she is. I think that I will not let myself feel silly for having friends that I have not met. They are real people and hopefully some day I will get a chance to meet these great people face to face.