A Post Not Intended As a Guilt Trip to World Travellers

Making friends in Scotland is entirely risky, I've come to discover. The Americans who live here never intend to stay, and the Scots want to take flight as soon as an opportunity comes available. At least in my experience. It very much makes me want to only cling to Scott and not make any friends, because I don't want to invest time and love into people who are temporary. It's like a temporary job: why would you want to go in, get trained, get to know the staff, get good at it, just to turn around and leave again? I could never be a in a military family that moved all the time because I could never feel settled.

I hate when friends say things like, "We're gonna live in Scotland for X amount of years, and then we plan on moving to Y." That kinda talk stops me in my friend-making tracks (and everyone says it, right down to the last Scotsman).

Not that I can blame people for going where they want to go, not that I have any anger or annoyance at people for doing so, it just makes this transition hard. And yes, I'm still in transition, six and a half months later.

For one, my family is 100% dispersed. I left the Arnold clan back in America with a positive outlook, because I knew I would be joining the McFarlane clan when I got here. One month later, my brother-in-law just up and shipped out to America with no intention of returning. Three months after that, my sister-in-law bolted to go live in England with no intention of returning. Scott had a small family to begin with, which was already going to be hard for me to get used to, but we suddenly became the Only Child of the McFarlane family.

But I had friends to look forward to making. But everyone has plans to move, except us. (Though to be fair, Debbie and Niall don't look like they plan to go anywhere--but Kilmacolm--for quite some while.) I know we're supposed to live and love like there's No Day But Today or something, but hell, I don't know how to do that. If I had known in college that I'd be moving to Scotland upon graduation, I guarantee I'd have had exactly one friend (Amanda), and I would've spent the entire four and a half years convincing her to come with me. Oh, how I long for the consistency of my dear friend Amanda! But I left her, like everyone here is leaving me. Sigh. I'm just lonely, what can I say? Having Devon here last week reminded me of how comforting it is to have old and lasting friendships. There's nothing funnier than old inside jokes, is there?

Sigh. I understand that I am being rather selfish in my feelings of loneliness. And ungrateful, too, I suppose, because I have Scott and his parents, and they are incredibly wonderful. And I do not intend at all to make Scott sound like he's not enough, because the truth is, I could be anywhere in the world, and as long as I had Scott by my side, I'd always feel like I belonged. So I guess I'm just sort of giving myself a pity birthday (tomorrow!) party. But if I don't sort it out somehow--like blogging--I'll just end up feeling depressed all day, and that's nae good.

I hope everyone, wherever they go, enjoy God's blessings on them to the fullest and find great pleasure in their goings-on. But I hope it's not wrong to hope the same for myself? *Heavy sigh.