We Thirtysomethings, We Lack and Urgently Need Friends

Adulthood seems to pass for valuing love and belittling friendships. Aren’t we all wrong?

Me and Mimi, my ex-roommate from my early working days in Oporto. Both married. She lives in Luxembourg, has a baby.-boy, and I live in the Portuguese countryside, with no children.

Today to start the day off right while leafing through the pages of a magazine dedicated to women’s health, I almost had an epiphany! No, I didn’t realize anything, only that I wanted to cry my ass off.

There are several reasons for this whirlwind of feelings that, when they appear, come in catapults, falling in spasms and forming a kind of tower of babel where nothing and no one understands each other.

I skimmed another page, reading about the experience of the post-partum period, mental health, the pressure demanded of women at that time in their lives, and how the interviewee — a familiar face to the Portuguese — rightly defended looking at mental health and trying to take it easy.

“Their lives, the lives of women, I read”.

And it was then that a major identity crisis hit me. I was reading those letters, forming words, and giving meaning to the world, but even if I read attentively, taken by curiosity, I felt I was not part of that group.

I was born in this body and am at peace with it. But my mind, that’s another… From this, it was a small step to start thinking about…