"I was at home recently when I realised I'm 30, and have absolutely no friends."

I’m in my 30s and have no friends.

So, there you have it.  

I’ve said it out loud.  

Or at least typed it.  

I am a grown woman, in my 30s and I don’t have friends. I have a great job, a few kids and a husband. I have a couple of dogs, a cat, a full bookshelf and a social media presence that gives the illusion of having friends. But, I don’t think I really have any. Or at least, not many.  

Friendship break ups are often harder to get over, but why don’t we talk about them as much? Post continues…

Once upon a time, I spent hours upon hours and what seemed like an endless summer with my friends, listening to music, sleep overs, shopping – all the usual teenage friendship activities. And to be fair, it’s these few people that remember my birthday without being prompted by Facebook.  

Then I went to university and met a new crop of people and spent countless nights out on the town and having various misadventures as we came of age.

And then I got a serious job and made some friends I worked with and we spent hours at trendy bars debriefing about our stressful job. And then some of them moved away and I moved away and life moved on.  

I had a few kids, met some ‘mum friends’ that never really stuck and then the other day, I had a bit of a crisis when I wondered what had happened to my friends.  

Is it me? Or them?  

Don’t get me wrong, I regularly text with a few people and we tag each other in memes at least three times a day, that’s a friendship right?

But the thing that got me really thinking was when I was changing the sheets on the spare bed after the usual musical beds that happens when you have several small children in your house. You see, I have moved away from the epicenter of the action, followed the masses into a tree change and am now a solid hour away from my friends and considerably further away from my family. But on the day in question, I couldn’t remember the last time I made up the spare bed for a friend and it made me quite sad.  

Upon reflection, I know that I made the move to live further away and so I have always made more of the effort to catch up with people because I know that not everyone wants to drive to the sticks on the weekends. And when my friends have said to me ‘oh I should come and see you sometime but it’s so far’ I always brush it off with ‘oh yes, don’t worry, it’s like a holiday coming here’ and indeed it is.  

But… sometimes, it would be really nice.