Living Abroad & Alone: Navigating Friendship, Aging & Emotional Solitude as a Black Woman

The Space Between Hello and Belonging

You know, I’ve been thinking … my life is pretty “alone”. I’m not lonely. I’m an introvert and love my own company. I like quiet and the sound of my own thoughts. I don’t need a crowd to feel complete but what I’ve noticed lately is that, outside of conversations with my mom where we laugh and crack jokes, I don’t really laugh a lot and I miss laughing with friends. I miss the energy of a good exchange. I miss the reflex of joy that comes from being seen without needing to explain yourself. As I get older, I realize I don’t really know how to make new friends anymore, especially not living abroad. Especially not when you’re self-aware, sensitive, and see through most people like glass.

A lot of the women I meet here are so damaged and I say that with grace and empathy, because I have been and still am in ways I’m trying to fix every day, living in the U.S. BS will do that to ya’! These women are on their healing journey which is done alone most times. Then there’s my personality; I’m emotionally intelligent. I read codes and see patterns. Whew and my Virgo moon is emotionally critical and I don’t mean judgmental I mean I see. I see the flaws in folks and accept them unless it is toxic to my happiness. The challenge is that people either can’t accept the flaws in themselves and/or don’t know how to accept mine that’s where the break happens that’s where things fall apart.

For three plus years I helped women move abroad and I’ve been treated horribly by a lot of Black women I tried to help. Women I’ve listened to, held space for, given energy that I didn’t really have to spare but I don’t find it to be their fault, not really because ignorance is blind. America has a way of numbing and dumbing us down and you can only rise to the level of your own intelligence and mine is (a)broad. That’s not ego, it’s just the truth. But that truth can intimidate people, so I find myself recluse, and introverted in an extroverted world. I don’t really have the capacity to hold other people’s pain anymore and yet I still feel it. I’m still compassionate and empathetic toward it but it’s heavy and I didn’t want to carry it for other people anymore.

They say as you get older, it is harder to make friends, I concur. People say “just go out” or “join a club” like connection is on the shelf at Walmart next to the milk but it’s not, especially when the friends you did have are gone. Most of mine have passed away. We’re not talking one or two, we’re talking over a dozen in the last ten to twenty years and the ones I was deeply connected to? They transitioned. The relationships ended because the person left this realm and I’m still here. Still human. Still interacting. I feel their presence sure but I can’t touch it. I can’t call them. I can’t laugh with them. So, I find myself here in Mexico still a bit isolated; partially self-imposed sure but also because I just can’t find the connection I desire and the connection has to be aligned.

At almost 57, I’m not collecting surface people anymore. Compatibility, understanding, forgiveness, emotional intelligence, that’s the currency now. If we can’t speak beyond ourselves, we don’t really have anything to say. I visit social media pages where people just post pictures of themselves in different poses with no substance, no soul, no story, no reflection, no curiosity, just aesthetics and angles. It’s like a void. A huge spatial void of connection and that’s magnified while living abroad because while I love this culture and I love these people, it’s not easy to form relationships when the rhythm and root of your experience is so different. It’s not impossible but it requires patience, humility, and a willingness to learn.

See, they don’t carry what we carry. They don’t have American slavery trauma etched into their DNA. They’re not moving through conversations about race, culture nor existence with the same heat and vibrato we do. Their family units are intact. Their collective sense of being is different. It’s not broken in the same spaces or places so if I want to connect, I have to unlearn, learn and relearn and that’s not impossible but it’s harder when you’re almost 60, when your mind still sharp but your heart’s been through some wars. This takes more effort and effort requires energy and that’s a precious resource now.

I know I’m not alone in this feeling and I figure others feel the void too. I know one woman who’s moving to another part of Mexico and I think quietly, it’s because she feels the absence of sisterhood and her wholeness is being threatened. She’s complex and I get that I’m complex too, I think we all are. I’ve met people here even had close encounters with longstanding relationships but something just never holds, it just won’t stick. Some move to other parts of Mexico or another country as expats sometime do… I don’t know, I’m just in this space. I’m not sad, I’m just… reflective and I wanted to share this because maybe someone else feels it too. Maybe someone else just needs to know; you’re not alone.

NikitheOracle