Over the years, I’ve found it hard to connect with new people.
Old friends? Easy.
You find a handful of people you can call when…
You need to solve all the world’s problems over coffee or a 5K run.
Or you need someone to help you bury a body, and they don’t flinch.
New people are different.
One place I did find connection was Krave in Carrboro when we lived in Chapel Hill. I was a regular noon kava tea drinker, so I slowly became part of that world. There was one person I talked to almost daily. Super smart guy, full of insight.
One day we ran into him at the grocery store. I said hi and introduced my husband. After he walked away, my husband leaned in and whispered, “That guy did NOT want to talk to us.”
I explained, “He’s one of my friends from Krave.”
Pause.
“And I made him be my friend by talking to him every single time I saw him… whether he wanted to or not.”
Face palm from my husband. Blank stare.
(He has tried to understand my brain over the years, but it is wildly different from his. To his credit, he keeps trying… but there have been a lot of face palms and blank stares over our 23 years of marriage.)
I will always cherish those noon chats with Eric. We talked about everything… AI, home repairs, cats… but really, it was just two people connecting who both have a hard time connecting with the bigger world.
And maybe that was the point.
During our 22 months in South Carolina, I found a version of that space but it wasn’t Krave. It was a vape shop with a kava bar in the back. And it was a 45-minute drive each way, which made daily social connection a bit… ambitious.
Now that we’re back in our liberal NC bubble, I’ve found my way to the downtown Raleigh Krave.
It took time to break into that circle.
I’m guessing the fact that I called Heather “Meredith” for most of that time didn’t exactly help.
In my defense, one of the baristas is actually named Meredith. And when Heather’s Facebook profile popped into my feed, I really hoped that “Heather M.” meant Meredith was her middle name.
Finally, one day, I just blurted out an apology for calling her Meredith for four months.
She didn’t care at all.
Instead, she gave me a job lead, a mortgage lender recommendation for when we inevitably need a cash-out refinance to pay for college tuition, and even offered to online bully the marketing team that made fun of my lack of progress in the social media world on Instagram.
Somehow, despite my social missteps, I found my way in.
The noon crowd. The cool people.
And last week, it was confirmed.
I was standing at the bar waiting for my tea, venting about my complete lack of social media marketing skills. I had accidentally set my YouTube videos as “appropriate for children.” I thought that meant, you know… not porn.
Turns out, it means your content gets categorized for children.
So all of my content meant for parents… was being served to kids.
A fellow Krave regular (someone I actually recognized from my Carrboro days) jumped in and reassured me that it’s a common mistake.
And just like that… I felt it again.
That sense of: Oh. These are my people.
Because here’s the thing, if you find the right place, the right pocket of people…
You don’t have to fit everywhere.
You just have to fit somewhere.
I will always be grateful for fitting in at Krave.