{"id":6522,"date":"2022-01-22T17:05:48","date_gmt":"2022-01-22T17:05:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/?p=6522"},"modified":"2022-01-22T17:36:37","modified_gmt":"2022-01-22T17:36:37","slug":"when-all-your-friends-move-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/when-all-your-friends-move-away\/","title":{"rendered":"When all your friends move away"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I find it to be such a stressful feeling, that all of my friends are moving or have already moved away. While I am happy for them, and I wish them all the best and all the happiness that they can get, I am also saddened that they\u2019re leaving me, and leaving behind the life that we had together.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Related: <\/strong>Loneliness Living Alone? Tips on How to Deal With it<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A part of me feels like they are leaving me<\/em>, personally. Although I know that they\u2019re actually leaving for<\/em> something else. For adventure, for new jobs, education, friendships, and experiences. It\u2019s not even about me, at all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it\u2019s also the fact that I, myself, have wanted to move to somewhere else for such a long time, but just haven\u2019t done it. But now when it feels like everyone has done it before me, it stresses me out. It makes me wonder if I\u2019ll be the one staying alone here forever. Stuck in someplace that they have already left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I know these thoughts are a bit overdramatic. Life will always be how I chose to see it, but I can\u2019t help but to feel these things. And I\u2019m trying to deal with them the best I can, by for example writing this. And I bet I\u2019m not the only one who\u2019s experiencing this. Perhaps someone will relate to reading this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Loneliness<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The hardest part of this experience has been loneliness. Almost all<\/em> of my closest friends moved away almost at the same time, and it left me without any close friends to hang out with. And I see that they are finding so many new friendships wherever they go, and I feel like I should also be able to do the same, but it\u2019s been hard for me to make new close friendships. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, it leaves me feeling left behind. I feel like I\u2019m missing out on a period of my life that \u201cshould\u201d be so much more social and fun. But I know these expectations are based on what I see of other people\u2019s lives on social media, movies, tv shows, and in romanized stories about life in your early 20s. When I talk to my friends, I know most of their daily  lives are not that different from my own. Theirs are just taking place in another geographical location.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I still wonder, are other people in their 20s living like this? Aren\u2019t most people my age surrounded by a ton of friends all the time? Am I the only one who\u2019s feeling this lonely? I don\u2019t know. I never thought I\u2019d feel like this, but still, here I am.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I want to move away as well<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m also feeling a sense of urgency in moving abroad myself. Is it because of FOMO? Am I fearing that I will miss out on the same cool and fun experiences as they are having? Am I worried that everyone else will grow as people, learn so many new things, have so many new memories to tell, but I won\u2019t? Or is it because I feel like I have no social context here anymore?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I\u2019m gonna be alone, I feel like I can at least be alone in a new city. Walking on new streets, going to new cute stores, visiting new museums, and working at new caf\u00e9s. I imagine myself pretending to be someone else, someone new, someone I\u2019ve always dreamt of being. Without any social context or old memories, perhaps I could be different? But do I even need to move somewhere else in order to be different?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t know the answer to any of my questions, so I\u2019m not sure why I\u2019m even bothering to ask them. But I feel like perhaps that\u2019s a part of the fun part of life, that I just haven\u2019t learned to enjoy yet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saying goodbye to an old life<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Even if I haven\u2019t been the one to move away, I feel like them<\/em> moving away still has forced me to say goodbye to an old life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The way our friendships were, will never be the same again. And it\u2019s sad in a way to say goodbye to something that has given me so much joy. But we\u2019re all changing, with every experience and I know that even if we\u2019d all live in the same city again in the future, our experience together will never be the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a way, it\u2019s beautiful. Even if they stayed, things would change. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve been feeling a lot of nostalgia towards these types of feelings lately. I\u2019m shocked almost whenever I look at old pictures on social media, seeing how memories took place years<\/em> ago. I don\u2019t know how all this time passed so quickly, yet so slowly. I\u2019ve been present, I\u2019ve been grateful, but still it all just passes. It makes me a bit scared to be honest. Time scares<\/em> me. But then, I also know that time is a mental construct and doesn\u2019t exist. So how can something that does not even exist, scare me?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m probably thinking too much. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think the solution is to work on acceptance: to openly and whole-heartedly accept the fact that my friends have taken choices in their lives that move them away from me. And I need to mentally embrace a new future, a new reality, a new way of living where I don\u2019t have the same things that I had before. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps the solution is to also grieve, to officially say goodbye to what has been, in order to move into the future without fear or anxiety. It sounds like I\u2019m talking about getting over someone dumping me, and yeah, I guess it is quite similar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All of my friends are moving or have already moved away. While I am happy for them, I am also saddened and am struggling with it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6523,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[258],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-thoughts","entry","has-media"],"gutentor_comment":0,"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/731AD397-FCC8-4F1B-B0F2-EF2EB5BED339-scaled-e1642871073912.jpeg",1560,1209,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/731AD397-FCC8-4F1B-B0F2-EF2EB5BED339-scaled-e1642871061411-150x150.jpeg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/731AD397-FCC8-4F1B-B0F2-EF2EB5BED339-scaled-e1642871061411-300x233.jpeg",300,233,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/731AD397-FCC8-4F1B-B0F2-EF2EB5BED339-scaled-e1642871061411-768x595.jpeg",768,595,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/731AD397-FCC8-4F1B-B0F2-EF2EB5BED339-scaled-e1642871061411-1024x794.jpeg",1024,794,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/731AD397-FCC8-4F1B-B0F2-EF2EB5BED339-scaled-e1642871061411-1536x1190.jpeg",1536,1190,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/731AD397-FCC8-4F1B-B0F2-EF2EB5BED339-scaled-e1642871061411-2048x1587.jpeg",2048,1587,true],"ocean-thumb-m":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/731AD397-FCC8-4F1B-B0F2-EF2EB5BED339-scaled-e1642871073912.jpeg",600,465,false],"ocean-thumb-ml":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/731AD397-FCC8-4F1B-B0F2-EF2EB5BED339-scaled-e1642871073912.jpeg",581,450,false],"ocean-thumb-l":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/731AD397-FCC8-4F1B-B0F2-EF2EB5BED339-scaled-e1642871073912.jpeg",903,700,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Wendy Zhou","author_link":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/author\/wendy1111live-se\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"All of my friends are moving or have already moved away. While I am happy for them, I am also saddened and am struggling with it.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6522"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6533,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6522\/revisions\/6533"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}