MY NEW EMOTION

I have felt a lot of things over the last two years: excitement, anxiousness, awkwardness, joy, peace, annoyance, anger, frustration, amusement and absolute hilarity. A few weeks ago, however, I felt a new emotion that I never knew existed: the bug-off-I-don’t-want-to-get-to-know-you feeling. It was kind of weird. 

I am a very social person; Paul is not. We work well together because we know that about each other and we support each other in our desires to either be completely and utterly social or a complete recluse. It’s fine.

I attended one of my first AWA coffees in months and, while sitting in a Starbucks, I was introduced to some unfamiliar people. I don’t go to these Wednesday and Friday coffees very often because I see the same people and, when new people were joining week after week, I got tired of the same questions over and over and over and over again.

”Hi, where are you from? How long have you been here? Is this your first expat assignment? How long are you here? What does your husband do? What did you do in your former life?” For the record I hate that question. I have a life now, thank you!

When I arrived, there were only two other women present. I knew them, so I sat down, smiled and caught up. And then, our star of today’s blog walked in and sat across from me. She was loud – OMG was she loud! – and she had just arrived but she already knew everything, at least that’s what I interpreted.

She seemed keen to talk to me but, before I knew what was happening, the wall was up, my disgust-o-meter started recording frequencies and I did everything I could to conversation block. What was this feeling? Annoyance? Yes, but there was something else.

In the same coffee, I met another woman who had just recently moved to Singapore. She seemed nice and we chatted for a while but still, I had this feeling like, “It’s nice talking to you but I have no real interest in being friends. No hard feelings.”

I like people. I like friends. But, to be honest, I only need a couple really close girlfriends, otherwise I don’t do so well. That’s why the sorority thing didn’t really work for me. I loved it while I was in it but 90 girls squeezed into a tiny house for meetings, all of those personalities – it was too much pressure. How is it possible to be sister-like friends with that many people? Now, I don’t completely regret the sorority thing. I do have some great life-long friends and I do have a cool connection with people I’ve never actually met thanks to Facebook, but I definitely learned that I cannot handle more than a few good girlfriends.

I have met a couple other ladies, some of whom are close to my age and it just keeps happening. I am fine chatting but my brain has totally shut off the accepting-new-friends mode. I guess it’s just because April is coming and the end is in sight. Since I know that leaving is inevitable, I simply have no interest in making new friends – at least not in Singapore. I am, however, totally open to making new friends in Papua New Guinea. I have already made myself a coffee date but we’ll get to that next time.