these are my confessions...

I was never really into Sex and the City.* During its six-season run, I didn’t catch a single episode. When the first movie was released in 2008, I still didn’t really buy into the hype, despite all the hoopla surrounding the fashion and costumes. But after seeing bits and pieces of the movie on HBO months later, curiosity got the best of me and I was intrigued enough to buy it on DVD. The movie kind of brought tears to eyes. No, I wasn’t teary-eyed when Big left Carrie at the altar. Nor did I shed a tear when Steve forlornly admitted to cheating on Miranda. My eyes didn’t even go into waterworks mode when Charlotte discovered she was finally pregnant.

At the risk of sounding pathetic, I’m going to admit that my waterworks were brought on by pure, unadulterated envy. My eyes welled up when Charlotte and Miranda comforted Carrie when she confronted Big in the street after he confessed he couldn’t go through with the wedding. I think I felt a tear drop when Samantha spoon-fed a devastated Carrie during their escape to Mexico. And if I recall correctly, I straight up bawled when the girls surprised Carrie after her courthouse wedding to Big (and when the foursome toasted Samantha’s 50th birthday at the end of the movie).**

Confused? Bear with me…

At 29 (and a half) years old, I don’t wish for unlimited access to designer handbags or a winning lottery ticket or a thousands of blog followers (though all of the above would be more than welcome). What I secretly long for is a close-knit group of female friends. (Well, I guess that longing isn’t so secret anymore, huh?) You see, Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte had formed an unbreakable alliance that endured painful breakups, cancer, and babies, among other things.

Now, I’m fully aware that these women are fictional characters whose lives were scripted and based on lines created by an army of writers. But I’m also fully aware that there are real women out there who have friendships like Carrie and her crew. And I want to be one of those women. But how do you make friends as an adult? I mean, Micah is able to make friends simply by asking, “Do you want to be my friend?” By my age, most women have already solidified their close friendships, whether it be through childhood, college, or the workplace. Despite volunteering and being involved at Micah’s school, the attempts that I’ve made at forming friendships with women that I’ve met at these places have been epic fails.

Regretfully, I didn’t really keep in touch with anyone from high school. Or college. (Apparently, I’m not the only one that has lost touch with old friends.) And while the dawn of social networking opened up the doors for faux friendships via Facebook, I still yearn for those close face-to-face connections based on trust and reciprocity and emotional support. Those women with whom I have a standing brunch date every week for cosmopolitans and conversation (okay, I really have been watching too much Sex and the City), those women who I trust enough to tell my secrets to, those women I’m excited to shop for when holidays and birthdays roll around.

The truth is, I suck at relationship-building. I’m socially awkward, unbelievably introverted, and painfully self-conscious. To top it all off, I’m also very “inside my own head,” which tends to come across as standoffish and unapproachable in social situations. Even building relationships via the blogosphere (where community and connections are everything) has proved to be problematic for me. I know a large part of it is due to the things I mentioned earlier—my introverted personality, my abnormal preoccupation with myself in social situations, and my irrational fear of interacting with others, lest I do or say ‘the wrong thing.’ Not to mention the fact that I have yet to master the art of small talk. Needless to say, I’ve never been bubbly or charismatic or charming; if anything, I’ve always been the wallflower, the one watching from the sidelines, the one that went unnoticed.

Unfortunately, the lack of camaraderie in my life has unleashed a colossal amount of apprehension. I fear that if I ever get married, I won’t have bridesmaids. I fear that in my old age, I’m going to be an eccentric ‘crazy cat lady’ living alone with 300 cats, scaring the neighborhood kids with my wild eyes, demented behavior, and senseless babble (and I don’t even like cats!). But most importantly, I fear that something is wrong with me, that I have this inherent inability to form and maintain meaningful relationships.

At nearly 30 years old, this is so excruciatingly embarrassing to admit, as I feel like the only woman walking the planet that is experiencing this type of loneliness and craving this type of connection. As I type this, I keep fighting the urge to click ‘Select All’ and hit the Delete key, while at the same time embracing the cathartic feeling I’m experiencing by putting to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) to finally voice something that I’ve held inside for a long while.

Now I realize this post may be induce feelings of pity, but that isn’t my intent. If this post generates any type of feeling, I want it to be a feeling of gratefulness for those of you that have women in your life with whom you have standing brunch dates every week, women with whom you share your secrets, and women you purchase gifts for each and every December.

*I’ve been watching the episodes ever since they’ve been showing them on E! Network. And now that BET has started regularly airing episodes of Girlfriends, I am all over that too.

**I apologize for the spoilers. But come on, it’s 2011. If you haven’t seen the Sex and the City movie yet, what are you waiting for?! But here’s a word of advice: skip the sequel.

[PHOTO CREDIT: watch mojo]