The unnecessity of friends.

 I don’t have friends. I used to have friends and they’re mostly male and single, and after I got married to prevent jealousy from Angel and his mom, I cut off all my ties to them. Also, Angel cannot hang out with my friends because he can’t speak our language and he wants all of us to speak English with him, which would just make casual chatting very burdensome. As a result, I’ve given up on maintaining friendships.

Now as my children are becoming socialized, the issue of having friends keeps resurfacing between me and Angel. He thinks I’m too anti-social so that our kids don’t have enough play dates, but I’ve always told him to feel free to take the kids to playdates on his own without me as frequently as he’d like, and he has never done that because that’s just not culturally American. The truth is he cannot handle taking both kids anywhere on his own. Every time when we had play dates, he can enjoy adult conversations with his friends nonstop, and his friends would just leave their kids to me and I’d have to play with my kids and their kids simultaneously. I could never have any adult time and I prepared all the food and gifts and toys. This kind of arrangement just makes me feel disrespected and used so I refuse to go to any playdates and he can take the kids on his own. 

On the other hand, I also wonder who they can find support from when they grow up. I grew up with my cousins but as they started their families, we decided to part ways in our lives and never talk to each other again. I have two brothers who don’t have kids, so my kids don’t have any cousins on my side, and their cousins on Angel’s side only see us once a year. Little O doesn’t know how to make friends at school and Little N just doesn’t like people or other children. I do worry if their company of each other alone is sufficient. In my case just texting my brothers every day is sufficient. If I have emotional pain from my marriage, I just write it down, wishing that X can hear me and take care of me. I just don’t find superficial conversations with so-called friends that worthy of my time. I do sometimes want to go to my alumni gathering, but the school I went to is super superficial and given my current powerless job and my fat body after giving two births, I don’t have the courage to hang out with them anymore.

It makes me sad that after working so hard and still working so hard I cannot escape my fate. I am destined to take care of everyone in my life, and no one can take care of me. I must have owed too many people too much debt in my past life so I’m using my current life to pay them back.