Womanfriends!
I am going on a women-only mini vacation. My womanfriends and I have decided to take a weekend off our families and spend it together catching up. You have to understand, they both live in Spain and I’m the only one still living in NYC, so for me this is a big deal. I’m actually taking four days off (as opposed to their meager two days), traveling across the Atlantic and paying a small fortune for my ticket just to spend some time having meaningful adult conversations with people I can trust and admire. It is that critical for me…
Yes, most people would think: “why you make it sound like it’s such a sacrifice? After all you’re gonna be partying or relaxing for some time in a girls’ trip!”. And that is definitely the right attitude to have, I get it! But let me try to explain my particular point of view:
1. I have always disliked everything with the prefix “girls” in the front. I never cared for “girls nights out”, or “girls parties” or “girls trips”. The level of “fun-ness” or joy I extract from a particular activity is completely unrelated to my companion’s gender.
2. Traveling to Europe for a short weekend used to be a common and looked forward to experience in my twenties and thirties. Now, at my forties, carrying over four years of accumulated sleep deprivation, it is not as appealing to add jet lag and traveling exhaustion to an already overtired mess of a person. My upper eyelids keep dropping over my eyeballs as a strong reminder that I need to shut my eyes closed!! damm it!!
3. Air tickets are not cheap these days. And not only they cost you a kidney and an eye, but they also are soooo not worth their price! I mean, who likes to be treated as sheep through security, fed a mix of salty, bloating-inducing load of junk for dinner and breakfasts (that ruins completely your detox slash starvation program carefully and timely planned to coincide with the opportunity of displaying a flat stomach on the beach), sat in an uncomfortable non reclinable hard sit next to a farting lady who wants to engage in incessant and boring conversation, and being packed in like sardines in a tin for eight hours just to find out your baggage didn’t make it your destination? I mean, really… who likes that? Sometimes, the prospect of a long vacation makes those ten miserable hours worth their while, but when it comes to short trips or business travel… how can such experience justify the price tag?
4. My husband is certainly going to exploit this to his advantage for many many many years to come: “well, remember when you left with your girlfriends for Spain? I took care of the children!”, “I’m the best husband ever, I let you go for a weekend, now please rub my feet again” or the worst one “we had a great time and everything went very smoothly the weekend you were gone: the kids had the same pajamas on for the last 96 hours so laundry was not an issue, they were very well behaved while comfortably parked in front of the TV for 16 hours a day and they ate everything on their plates! All the pizza, ice cream and peanut butter jelly sandwiches I prepared them!… I am a great father, why don’t you chill out a bit and learn from the master?”. So I already hate the idea of coming back and having to deal with Mr. B’s wonderful parenting lessons.
BUT! Despite all of these drawbacks and many more intangibles too complex to describe in a blog post, I am still choosing to go on this trip. Not only that, I’m already looking forward to it and I’m daydreaming constantly about the conversations we will have, the laughs and adventures we will share, and mainly the idea of not feeling lonely! Yes, I do feel terribly lonely. I have never been a particularly gregarious person. I love people but I’m very shy and it is incredibly difficult for me to spark new friendships on my own. I am unable to start a conversation with a stranger. If there is an intermediary, somebody I know who is introducing me to a new person, I’m able to take advantage of the situation and keep the flow going, pretending to be outgoing and social. But please please please don’t put me in a room full of people and ask me to make acquaintances! I despise it!
And to make things worse, I hate talking on the phone. I always have! I don’t know why, but I just don’t enjoy conversations much unless I’m seeing, feeling and touching the same air the other person is breathing. I know about FaceTime, Skype, you name it! And I use them! Regularly! But irremediably I end up having connection issues or paying more attention to the ever descending droopiness of my eyelids in my video feed than the other person’s cute kids singing “Hola Don Pepito”… I just don’t like it! So I am and have always been just the worst at keeping in contact regularly with my dear dear friends! And they know it and accept it, which makes them even better friends that anybody could ever imagine… I come with a disclaimer: “i love you dearly and always will but don’t ask me to call you regularly or be a constant presence in your life. When we see each other next it will be like we were never apart, even better, like we are part of each other’s daily life”. My friends have been incredibly gracious and get it, I think in many ways they appreciate also the fact that they don’t have to constantly make an effort and I will still remain faithfully theirs forever.
I’m already thinking of the things I’ll pack and how fun is gonna be just being together, feeling the presence of somebody that just gets you when you talk and even when you don’t… somebody that doesn’t judge you and that is always, even with your quirkiness, gonna have your back. I love my womanfriends and they make me wanna be better each day, they inspire me, motivate me, keep me sane and push me out of my comfort zone… my womanfriends are my lifeline and I need my dose to stay alive! Let’s have a great weekend across the pond together and come back refreshed!
Love you V and C!!
