I've become that person

I've become that person, the one who never returns phone calls, who makes no attempts at staying in touch with acquaintances and friends, who has gone MIA. The person I never used to understand, the person I used to get profoundly upset at when someone else, someone I considered a friend, or a friend in the making, would inexplicably morph into.

Is it the baby, is it this semi-suburban lifestyle, the routine grind of it all -- wake up at 5:30 by alarm-clock baby, drag myself to work, waste one third of the work day on watercooler baby chat with other moms, drag myself back from work just in time to put Mr. Meh to bed, doze off for a few minutes, eat dinner, clean up the daily tornado aftermath that Mr. Meh's roaming leaves behind, get to bed around midnight, only to do it all over again.

A guy-friend who had slowly been falling of the friend-wagon to the point that we we bumped at each other at the metro we barely spoke like acquaitances who've long parted ways. I actually had a bit of an up-turned nose because back in the day I felt snubbed when our friendship started trailing off. (We were friends, but not really part of the same friend circle. He always seemed to have a friend circle which I would occasionally visit, but he was never really part of my friend circle. The problem was, even back then, that I never really had a friend-circle situation. I was always more of a sole drifter visiting different circle friends.) The trailing off started a few years back when he got married, got pregnant and moved to the burbs. (The same burbs in which I now live less than a mile from his house.)
A year or so into the baby, we met for lunch, when he said, "Oh, you'll see once you have a kid you'll fall of the radar for a few years."

I didn't understand what he meant back then in my pre-marital, pre-suburbian, pre-dog, pre-baby days. I just felt slighted that he couldn't remember to remain friends. A few years later, another friend, a female friend, pulled the same crap at me one their first baby was born. Just stopped being in touch. She and her husband would be very pleasant and eager to socialize when I'd meet at embassy functions, but every year it would stop at that. Numbers would be exchanged, I'd make the phonecall to make plans to get together. And inevitably that would be it. About two years ago, after one such encounter, we did get together and they came for a visit. And I never heard from the again. I wonder whether it was Mariposa who scarred off their two daughters.

I still didn't understand during Ivan's first year. I'm just beginning to get it now. In the last few months. It's inertia. It's too much work and effort and at the end of the day you just want to kick your feet up and not talk to people. (Also, as I've realized in my recent conversations with some single girlfriends, you run out of things to talk about because your life becomes all about the baby: "Baby this, baby that," And really who cares to hear about the baby's latest accomplishments of mastering the babble of a new syllable construction but you, your husband and the grandparents.)

It's not that I no longer think about my friends, not so close friends and acquaitances. I do spend a lot of transitory time thinking about how I should call them (those who live far), and try to make plans with those who are still here (although as I've noticed lately, the local friends are in short supply now. They all seem to have dissipated to other locations.) Instead of spending so much time on thinking, I could just make an effort to call. But that's too much work and committment.

It's too much chatter and at the end of the day, I'm just not in the mood for chatting. And to make plans to go out -- at night, I'd feel guilty going for a girls night out while Andy is at home (not that the homebody he is that he'd mind, actually, it's me who would mind), and during the day on weekends, I'd rather spent that time with Ivan and Andy and Mariposa -- my little family.

Or have I just become too complacent and lazy. Occasionally, I do fret about it. Fret about one-day finding myself friendless and alone (I never thought it wise to put all of my eggs in one, husband, basket, not matter how much I love Andy. Afterall, he's not a girlfriend material).

And since I work with a lot of friendly women my age, the situation gives me the illusion of having friends -- because we spent a lot of our day in friendly banter -- but at the end of the day, they are not friends, they are colleagues. Colleauges that if I leave this team I wouldn't stay in touch with most of them. Our relationships (or at least my relationship with most of them) is based on work commonality and not much else.

Case and point: I still haven't seen Sex and the City. Teally don't have anyone to go with. My best friends live far. Some people from work went for a girls night out, but noone remember to invite me. Some friend-acquintances who I recently saw at a mutual friends wedding didn't think of calling me. Another friend (a newly acquired mommy friend in the making) invited me to go and see it with her girlfriends. I couldn't go because I was busy that night (and besides I think I wouldn've felt like a total tool to have gone to see this move with more or less complete strangers.)
I guess I could've been more proactive about it, but I just wasn't.