Will you be my friend?

How do you know when you want someone to be your friend?  What is it when you meet someone new that makes you decide you want them to be your friend?  It’s a weird question to ask yourself as an adult.  I walked away from meeting someone new a little while ago and I was excited.  Like that inital spark of meeting a hot boy.  You walk away with a grin across your entire face, thinking about how funny they were, how lovely, how nice… and then the fear sets in.

Did they like me?  Did they notice that I had a gravy stain on my shirt?  I hope my breath didn’t stink?  Oh, I made that stupid line about pot bellies, I hope she doeesn’t know anyone with one?  It’s the hour after the first that all of those fears set in.  Where you doubt your presentation, your sense of humour and your hygiene practices.  I know deep down that I am probably doing ok.  I have other friends and I would be mortally offended if I had any of those problems and for the last thirty-two years (almost thirty-three – I’m holding on to that week) they had left me unchecked.

I met my ‘new friend’, she’s not yet but I’ll call her NF anyway, at the gym.  I’ve only made one other friend at the gym and it has built up slowly.  When I met NF at the gym I liked her instantly.  She was funny, we talked lots and I wanted to just hang out with her.  We parted ways with a chat at the car and I hoped that we would run into each other again.  We did.  That happens at the gym but the meetings were infrequent and at different times – there was no schedule to either of our gym visits and it seemed weird to ask a woman I barely knew to sweat with me.

I joined my writers’ group and my attendance at Thursday night boxing classes became infrequent.  I made it back sporadically and we switched phone numbers and emails.  I know she’s got stuff going on, a life without me in it and a job and fiance and all sorts of stuff and for the first time in a while, I didn’t quite know what to do.  Can I text her?  Send her an email?  Invite her to something?  Stalk her on facebook?  Add her on facebook?  I just didn’t know what was appropriate and what wouldn’t have me coming across looking like a freaky fat gym girl who obviously didn’t have enough friends. 

It turns out that NF thought much less about this debacle than I did.  She didn’t think I was stalkerish, didn’t know that I had fretted about the fact that when we first met I was so sweaty I am lucky my pants didn’t slide off or appear to be put off that I had sent her an email.  The banter was friendly, if not open, and I thought my friend finding paranoia was starting to pay off.  After that, I saw NF less and less at the gym.  I worried that my email was unwelcome, that she may not have liked me at all and rationalised that she was obviously very busy and didn’t me asking her weird stuff. 

It was last week after netball that I called in to do a quick 20 minute cardio session at the gym.  Apparently I felt I hadn’t quite sweated enough at netball and I thought I needed the little kick at the end. (I know, sometimes I don’t know who I am either.)  NF was there, doing her own session and I was genuinely suprised to see her.  We chatted while she panted and she made a comment about my shirt.  ‘It’s my netball uniform’ I say. She smiles and says she loves netball.  I then ask her to play on our over supplied netball team that has twelve registered players but is somehow short everyweek.  She’s says she’d love to and I leave her to her workout.  

We exit the carpark at the same time and she yells out the window, ‘see you Thursday!’  The face wide grin is back and for five minutes I’m excited that I’ve made a new friend all by myself without any of those social constraints that make it easy for most of us.  She isn’t a friend of a friend, not someone from work – she is a real bonafide stranger and I am making her my friend.  It’s when I get in the car that the grin fades when I notice the sweat marks under my arms, my uneven pants legs and the unidenified food stain on my shirt.  It seems that there are somethings about me that I just can’t seem to control.  Next week I think I’ll wear a new gym shirt.

I search my phone a day or so later to capitalise on our friendly banter.  I want to tell her about netball but I’m not sure she really wants to play.  I want to send her a text that says, “hey, it’s all ok, just in case you’re interested really, let me know.”  I search my phone and in the last update I’ve chosen one from March.   NF’s stored phone number did not exist in March and it is therefore missing from my phone.  I check my emails and I can’t find it there either.  My only other option is to facebook stalk her.  So I do.  Because it’s easy and she’ll never know if I do it.

I find NF easily.  Her profile picture looks at me and now comes the question, do I add her?  I mean I’ve met her.  I know her.  And I’ve even met her in the last ten years.  She’s not some random human I went to pre-school with and haven’t seen in twenty-five years like two hundred other facebook friends. She’s a real, live flesh and blood human I’ve met and spoken to.  I should be able to add her but the fear of freaky fat gym girl rejection is too strong and instead I send her a message that starts with ‘I’m not stalkerish or anything but…’  I don’t know what’s worse, being the stalkery freaky gym girl in real life or protesting that you aren’t one.  It’s a tough call, but one that’s been taken away from me.  

I’ve sent it.  It’s out there and now is the real testament.  If she writes back, she doesn’t think I am weird, freaky or stalkerish.  Just a little paranoid and odd.  I can live with paranoid and odd so I wait.  And I wait.  She replies in an acceptable time frame and dismisses my stalkerish tendencies.  Her response is positive, friendly and funny and I remember why I wanted her to be my friend in the first place.   She must have not noticed my stained shirt, my sweat marks or weird remarks about pot bellies because she adds me and my facebook friend count increases by one.  I am stoked but now I just have to refrain myself from pestering her to join my netball team and getting her to accept some of the other gravy stained shirts I love so dearly.  

So that’s it.  Making new friends is hard.  I dearly want to walk up and give NF half of my vegemite sandwich but we both know that bread is the enemy and not good for either of us, so I dare say that will be unwelcome.  If all else fails though and you see me walking to the gym with carrot sticks and a hommus dip, don’t worry, I’m not weird.  I’m just making friends.