slightly

I've noticed for two months now my lack of blog writing. If only I could find something meaningful enough to write, I thought. I agonized over the triviality of my existence. There is nothing worth writing here, I thought. But then I decided that the longer I waited the more pressure I put on myself to write something totally inspiring. So, to break the block, I'll settle for something slightly inspiring.

I can never say that I have no friends. Not only will my Heavenly Father never leave me (did I get my negatives right?), but neither will those my dearests in DC and Provo. I have friends: I call Emilie every day and others without Cingular every weekend. I just have no friends here (which is not a stab at Kevin, my very best friend. I mean, of course, besides him).

I have three opportunities in which to meet people and begin to develop relationships: home, work and church. The ways in which I have discovered where I won't be making friends are the subtle slights that come my way.

The first week living with Consuelo and Araceli, I expected we'd get along. I never hoped for the type of mindful happiness that came from sharing beds and secrets as with my previous roommates. But call me an optimist that I thought we'd be civil. Then one day I sat reading Harry Potter five at the table. Connie came in and commented on the size of the book. I suppose it is rather large, but I've had worse. She remarked in an off-handed manner that she could never get through such a volume. I asked companionably if she didn't like to read. "I guess I'm just more of a thinker," she said. I've heard comments between the two of them (I have three roommates but Laura doesn't count, since she's never home): "she just reads." Fine. I'm a freak. And now the kitchen seems to shrink if I am in there with one of them, and we never speak to each other unless business demands it, namely bills that need paying.

At work, I can use small talk and the energy that comes from a rush to give myself courage to speak to my coworkers. Then I got transferred upstairs to women's department. It is deathly still up there. The only way it stays open is that the one customer who comes in per hour spends over a hundred dollars on three poorly made albeit orange shirts. The time passes very slowly because there is nothing to clean, no one to help, nothing to restock and nobody with whom to converse. Yesterday, two girls I work with, Elisabeth and Erika, were leaning against the counter talking. As I walked up to them Elisabeth looked at me, then switched her story into Spanish. Erika replied in the same language. I nodded my head and walked away. Point taken. I wanted to tell her she could have just asked me to leave, but I couldn't remember how to say that in French.

For two full hours, I brooded over my loneliness, compacted by the looming Enrichment activity to which I felt determined to go. Church was just another place to be ignored. How, after so recent a slight, could I find the courage to go and attempt to make friends?

Then Elisabeth did it again. This time I had been at the counter first, and one of the security guards came over to chat. She began conversing with him in Spanish, but he looked at me and replied to her question in English. My heart swelled with gratitude for his thoughtfulness.

From then on I felt included (except by Elisabeth of course). I had conversations with Hortensia and Louise and felt the Almost feeling, that says how closely resembling friendship my interactions with them are. It made me slightly more optimistic and brave enough to venture to Enrichment. You know, I think I might be making friends there, too. I don't have them yet, but it'll happen.