I don’t know if you get your hair done in the salon, or if your hairdresser is as fabulous as mine, but my salon visits are something I look forward to, and often feel more like social visits than appointments. As my hair tends to take a while to do, that gives us lots of time to chat, and although I am well aware that I am both a paying customer and client, it does start to feel like the beginnings of a new friendship.
However, it is not lost on me that she is paid to have these chats, and I bet she chats like this to all the girls! Haha by which I mean all her other paying customers. So it stands to reason that she’s a social butterfly. She is so colourful with all her pretty ink, she may well actually be an actual beautiful butterfly!
Let me set the scene for you though. As soon as you lay eyes on her, you will immediately get “hot bad girl” vibes. Yet, she is charming and endearing and gentle and kind, which is a contradiction that I personally enjoy. I love it when people surprise me with their personality, like the sweet teacher who swears like a sailor or the quiet librarian who enjoys karaoke. These people intrigue me and it feels special to see this other side of them that might not typically be on display for all to see. It is like a behind the scenes tour, which is endlessly fascinating and surprising. Anyway, true to what you would expect from the bad girl, she has a busy social schedule and her stories of all-nighters make me feel old and tired just hearing about them! For reference, we’re the same age, and technically she is 4 months my senior, but you would never guess.
I’m the frumpy mum she thought would be good at accounting because I have a dull life, and, as a lovely ex friend described it, the personality of a dead fish! Lol I guess she thinks I am just too white and nerdy! I’m in bed by 9pm and can’t handle my drink well. Most weekends I spend alone, writing, because my husband works weekends and everyone else I know is busy with partners, friends, and family. I don’t mind too much, my quiet life. When hubby does come in from work it’s evening and the kids have had their dinner. So he and I eat together, watch a movie or a show cuddled up together and I’m usually asleep on his chest before the end of whatever we’re watching. This is my little life, and my husband’s long work hours are why I would be lonely without the support of my friends.
Because I have good friends, and we stay connected, mostly I’m not lonely, even when I am alone for long stretches such as the weekends. That’s not to say I don’t love to live vicariously through the adventures of my hairdresser and her bad girl life though! I do! Oh to have her problems of too many people trying to kiss her on a night out. That has never happened to me in the history of me being on a night out! Not even once!! I enjoy her stories of nights out on the town that don’t end until 11am the next day and dating disasters with bad boys. Sure, I could’ve told her it would be a disaster – but where’s the fun in that? My bad boy days are behind me and I have discovered the necessity of Mr Nice for myself, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know their appeal!
Whether it is drinks at the bar with an old friend, a club with her bestie, a drag show with a few clients, or more interesting endeavours I better not write about publicly online, her life seems so full and busy and fun. I can’t imagine her ever sitting home alone all weekend with not a soul reaching out to her. Most of my visits she even has friends stopping by the salon. I can see why, with her vivacious and charming ways, everyone just wants to be a star in her orbit.
Personally, I need 5 close friends. I have written about this dozens of times, and if I try and take on too many more, I find myself dropping the ball on people because I value and pride myself on being a good friend. Caring and supportive and engaged. The type who remembers to wish you well for your awards ceremony, help you choose the best outfit for a date or ask how your appraisal went with your boss. I could not maintain so many friends. But it’s like magic in motion to watch this butterfly spread her wings, and she seems genuinely happy to see every friend she has ever introduced me to.
Her and I are connected on social media, and often use this platform to communicate about hair appointments or send pictures of styles and colours etc…. but we also then see and interact with each others posts on the platforms and so, conversations do often drift away from hair into more personal territory. Hard not to, when we know so much about each other from hours of salon visits comprising of talk topics from idle chit chat to juicy gossip. So I was surprised to hear her share a feeling of loneliness.
I did not make this meme. I know it should be "you're" - and yes, that might be why?! haha
“You have a million friends!” I was quick to point out. After all she was never alone and in bed by 8pm like me on a Saturday evening with no plans. Her phone was so filled with messages from so many people she found it hard to keep up and often ended up not even reading them all let alone responding to them all. Her calendar was full of invites to exciting things and every holiday she took she came home with a collection of new contacts and friends. People were drawn to her. It made no sense that she would be lonely.
However, she made no hesitation in correcting my assumptions. “I don’t have a lot of friends,” she typed back. “I know a lot of people. There’s a difference.” Stopping to ponder this, I immediately saw the difference. That feeling where you speak to everyone but talk to no one. That’s the exact reason I hate parties and groups, I feel lonelier in groups, which is ironic. So I could definitely see why seeing someone different every weekend, but someone you only see once a year, was less satisfying than seeing someone who keeps up to date with your life and cares about you and not just going out and getting wasted.
My heart hurt for her, because we all deserve to feel loved and we all want to feel connected. She was quick to acknowledge that she has shortcomings as a friend, in that her life is chaotic to say the least, and as a result she’s so consumed with the goings on in her own world, she sometimes neglects to show care and check in regularly with people. This pattern will definitely hinder her desire for closeness. However, I also pointed out that it was her who reached out to me to check in, so that was progress and something to show she has the ability to correct the error of her ways and seek consistent connection.
I suggested that romance and sex were not the answers to loneliness, and neither was alcohol and partying. Those things were only avoiding the very closeness she craved. What she needed to understand was that closeness was based on consistency and vulnerability. So she needed to try opening up to someone consistently and routine would help her achieve this. For example, to choose a friend to call every day after work, or pick a person to kind of always be in constant communication with during the day. A person she could quickly message between clients, or send a funny video, or read about their bad day or hilarious embarrassing moment and share her own horror stories too.
Not to try and do this for every person, or she would inevitably fail and feel even further from her goal and incapable of success. I reasoned that we could probably really help each other in this regard, as she could teach me to be less intense and more casual, and to not take things so personally, while I could coach and encourage her to reach out, show interest and share of herself to others as she had with me.
Sometimes it’s easier to open up to an impartial party, and friendly as we are, (and as much as I like her, which is a lot,) her and I are so opposite I don’t really know if we could manage to maintain a friendship that was mutually satisfying. I think she would find me needy and I would find her elusive, leading her to feel smothered. We would both feel not good enough. That isn’t to say we couldn’t or won’t develop a friendship, because we already have vulnerability and relative consistency. We are able to acknowledge our differences from the start and discuss problems before they become problems. I would know to keep expectations low while she would know to make more effort. And who knows, maybe she could inject a little more excitement into my life in exchange for the connection I could bring to hers.
The point is that we shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover, because things are often not as they seem, and the people who you think may be full of life might be the loneliest of all.
❤ Love,
Your Best Friend ForNever
xx
