My son came down the stairs with his English book as soon as I closed the front door and tossed their propaganda on to the couch.

“Jehovahs , huh?”

“Yeah. I thought we had got rid of them when I told them that our beliefs on who Jesus and the Holy Spirit are are vastly different than theirs but they’re back.”

“I knew it,” my kid said with a slight eye roll. “I was up there thinking ‘it’s probably the Jehovahs because my mom isn’t wearing a bra again.'”

That pretty much describes my life and I could say lately but that’s my life always – weird.

It’s true that I was wearing the stay-at-home-homeschooling- mom uniform when they knocked on the door and I knew it was them because, sadly, they are about the only people who ever stop at my house. Christian churches I have attended don’t believe in visiting people in person anymore it seems. They think they’ll only win souls by posting a clip on their social media account of a hipster pastor preaching or opening a hipster coffee shop. I like the word hipster and I am fully aware it makes me sound older than dirt. God forbid Christians today knock on a door or two, but then again I wouldn’t be a big fan of that either. I was an introvert before Facebook made everyone else one.

This weekend I realized, not without disappointment, that my friends are merely acquaintances, which means they never knock on my door either. I came to this conclusion about my pseudo-friends when I realized not one of those friends knows anything about me. Not one knows my favorite food, favorite color , what music I listen to, movies I watch, books I read or even what I think about many issues. I thought about what would happen if one of these acquaintances got sick and I realized I would have no problem helping them until they got well again, but it hit me, pretty full force , that they wouldn’t do the same for me.

How do I know this? Maybe because none of the people who used to be in a group I called friends almost never ask how I am. In fact only one person I’ve known for more than a few years as a friend has asked me this. It is what it is so don’t pity me. It is the natural evolution of friendships, though it took me a long time to actually except the demise of all my Nike friendships.

Other friends from high school or college never text, call, email or even send a carrier pigeon. (Getting a carrier pigeon would be so cool, though, wouldn’t it? Open up your front door and a pigeon is just sitting there with a message in its’ mouth, tilting its’ little head back and forth so its’ beady eyes can look at you while it coos ? That would be hilarious.)

Am I trying to paint a picture here that I’m a victim? No. Does it sound like I am trying to convince you I am a victim? Probably. But I don’t mean to.

What I am doing is realizing that for years I have sat wishing my friends were remotely interested in spending time with me (yes, I have asked and their response is usually “we will have to do that sometime,” but sometime never comes.) and wasting my time by getting my hopes up only to have those hopes ignored. I wasted way too much time looking at a phone to see if my message was returned or waiting for the phone to ring.

What I should have been doing instead is letting go of the past and that means letting go of people who used to be my friends and accepting they’re merely acquaintances now, which is fine and simply a part of life.

Maybe then I’ll look toward my future, instead of wallowing in, and moaning over, the past. And maybe then I’ll have enough gumption to change my daily uniform so that the Jehovah Witnesses don’t catch me braless again.