Eden Onpeng

Becoming a parent is a big life transition, one I’d been dreading for quite a while because of what I’ve heard from other people. You’ll never see your friends again. People drop off the map.

I did have a friend (let’s call her Cang) who dropped her end of the rope after becoming a parent. We weren’t part of each other’s core friendship groups (she too maintained a group of old friends from middle school) so maybe this was part of why she chose to cut me out. After a couple of planned dates that didn’t work out from her end, I reached out to her via messages, and while she would respond, she ultimately stopped initiating. And eventually, after a few more one-sided exchanges, I stopped initiating, and as a result, we haven’t communicated since December 2023 when I reached out to her to wish her a merry Christmas and a happy birthday. Her son was about three years old.

Maybe Cang felt there was a disconnect because I wasn’t a parent and she was, and perhaps there were things that I wouldn’t understand as a non-parent. Maybe she had outgrown the friendship since becoming a parent. This could be true, and I think she might have dropped me because I was always on the peripheral of her friendships–nice to have but not core–and so she could afford to drop me when priorities became tight. I imagine she would prioritize her middle school friends, and I get it.

Our friendship died slowly, via slow “ghosting,” where I noticed only when I reached out, and later on, when I reviewed the time stamps and realized it had been a long time since I had last reached out to her, that she hadn’t initiated in our last few interactions, and that I now had little to talk about with her. There was no breakup message, she simply stopped watering the friendship and let it wither away. In her garden of friendships, ours was ultimately pruned via thirst.

I pushed away my hurt and moved on with life even though it haunts me now, as I am about to give birth. I suppose I have the option to reach out to her again now in hopes of reconnecting now that I am also a parent, but the hurt remains and I don’t like the idea of being discarded again as soon as my compatibility wanes.

Some of the things I cherish most in the world are my close friendships with my ride-or-die homies. These are the homies who showed up for our courthouse wedding, officiated by low-budget Bernie Sanders, who hugged me tightly during the fallout of my first marriage, and who went to my sister’s funeral. Even as my pregnancy progressed and mobility became an issue, I made it a point to host gatherings to bring my closest friends together–a precious thing in today’s fast-moving world and our adult lives. I grew up feeling very lonely, and friendships were like a ray of light in my mostly isolated existence, a lighthouse in the stormy waters of my childhood.

As I’m on the cusp of giving birth, I dread losing these friendships. I’m afraid parenthood will somehow change me or my priorities to the point where I will drop these friendships, like those stories I’ve heard about people who disappear into parenthood and fall off from their friendships.

I guess I’m afraid of the Unknown: where my mind will be as a new parent. I’m afraid I will become (due to brain changes, post-partum depression or stress) someone who no longer cares about these friendships, who lets them wither away like Cang did with my friendship. After I’m afraid my new priorities as a mom will cause me to drop everything that made me “me,” like my reading, my writing, and my friendships. Will these things no longer be important to me? Will I change that much as a person?

I hear so much about new parents who feel like they’ve lost who they were before becoming parents. But I also hear that it gets better with time, as the baby grows and learns to sleep through the night.

I guess this is something I won’t know until I’ve crossed the bridge. And perhaps these fears are unfounded based on the actual facts. Although I am the first in the group of homies to become a parent, my friends have been so supportive. They’ve filled our home with love. They’re going to be really cool aunties and uncles to Baby Daniel. Perhaps because I have this on my mind, and because it’s so important, I will find some way to maintain these precious friendships with my homies. Our friendships may change, just as they did when we became full-fledged adults with adult responsibilities of jobs, bills, and other duties, but it would mean the world to me if our friendships evolve, rather than wither, as we move through these new life milestones.