Coming down off the high that is my reunion with the great women of Wildside, I have to remind myself of what real life is about. There is at least a bit of a tendency to think, “Ahhh, that’s the good life; that’s what being a tgirl is all about!”

But, it’s not.

As much as the friendships and good times are the stuff of which a great life is made, the experiences of that week are far too intense and short-lived to be able to extrapolate much from them.

Burning It Up

Wildside burns like a meteor, which – as everyone knows – soon crashes to the ground. We all put our party-selves into high gear and rock Vegas for a week, but by the end of it, even the most hearty of our number – and perhaps, especially they – have run out of gas and need a week to recuperate.
In fact, it is during the week after that most of us slowly are able to recall and truly appreciate much of what went on – it having zipped by so quickly, and the stimuli having been so numerous and unrelenting that it was impossible to process everything in real time.

Of course, we have so little time together that we try to pack in as much as possible into that one week. It is a testament to our understanding that time is precious and we should not take one moment for granted.

However, we are only human, and cannot live at quite that pace for long.

Wanting Something Deeper

I have felt in myself and sensed in others a desire to find time in that week to connect on a deeper level with each other. Connecting with someone takes some time – a commodity in short supply in that week especially. And there are so many people worth talking to, so we try to connect somehow, if only for a second.

I think we realize that to create real, serious friendships, bonding must take place in the context of everyday life and the challenges of the real world. I think visits between our get-togethers are becoming more common for this reason too.

These are really terrific people; I am quite sure we’d be amazing friends in the real world as we are in the Wildside bubble. But we live so far from one another and we each have pretty full schedules. (For those of us who lead double-lives, not having 48-hour days really makes time tight.)

Bittersweetness

That’s part of the sadness of leaving each other every year; we know that many of these people are compatible and interested potential friends that we may never have in the full sense of the word. And none of us has enough good friends. Right?