Friendship

Friendships are hard.  Difficult. For me at least.

Let's count down my major friendships over the years.

When we left California, I left a best friend named Denise. And I don't remember much more than that, other than playing in the ball pit at Chuckie Cheese on my 5th birthday. We moved a week later.

I met this girl who I thought looked like a cousin I had just met (my family is Irish/Slav Catholics, I have lots of cousins). But she wasn't. But she did live nearby. We were friends until she moved.  I also hung out with a boy who my mom worked with his dad, but we will discuss him later.

Lets fast forward to freshman year in high school. There was a tiny blonde, a frumpy brunette, and a curvy redhead. Sounds like a bad joke huh? Me... I was the frumpy brunette (still am actually just more curvy). Back then with my raging teenage hormones and the fact I didn't know any better I began dating a senior boy. Even though my hormones raged that relationship never got past first and I got dumped. Hindsight says there was something I gave off that indicated a no go. He very shortly after began fucking my best friend, the redhead.

Sure being dumped sucked but the biggest hurt was the teenage drama and complete collapse of my social circle. The redhead was clearly with him and the tiny blonde didn't want to take sides. After a time everyone was clearly on his side. He was an important senior after all and I just a lowly freshman. I had no friends left.

So I made new ones. A bubbly blonde Mormon girl and our snarky younger "daughter" who we took in under our wings. By the time I was senior I was the top dog in the band-nerd social circle. My favorite story from this time, which I heard about many years later.... Remember the redhead who stole my boyfriend? We had grown up and past that and were friends again. But I also had my new group. The two most attractive girls in the nerd herd were the redhead and the bubbly blonde. All the guys were fighting over their attention. But you know what, they were fighting over me! How cool is that?

So college started. I had developed a crush on the snarky younger girl who had blossomed from the shy girl into quite the pretentious bitch. What can I say, I like girls who are kind of mean to me. But that is a story for another time. I chose a college that many of my friends chose too. Including my childhood boy friend. We had been on again off again in terms of friendship and closeness over the years and in college we began to stick together again (he finally got over me breaking up with him before I got into the other high school mess).

The poor kid has an overbearing mother. He was afraid to have any fun. But I had moved past having fun and into a dark space by the time I hit 22. He got tired of being called only when I needed something and never having time for him otherwise. Granted I was a bad friend. But true friends should recognize when you are drowning and do something about it. Yes, at that time the depression sunk in and I was beginning to get an inkling on how gay I was and I was not dealing with it well. So I drowned myself in alcohol. We are no longer friends (the childhood friend *and* the alcohol).

I made a special friend while I was in Scotland for a year learning to be a botanist. She was special because I wouldn't have survived without her. She was special because even though she has had a lot of lesbians hit on her (she went to a Seven Sisters college after all), I was the only one she had considered switching sides for. We don't really talk anymore but I will never consider her anything less than a friend. That was also the year I lived on The Kitten Board and finally started to deal with who I was. It is still in process of course, hence the need for therapy.

Even though I am a "bad friend" I am the one who puts forth the effor for contact 99% of the time now with my old school chums. Thanks to Facebook I can keep track of them with very little effort and update them about my life in case they happen to care.

I have made one friend recently that I am grateful for. I am glad she wore her HRC shirt one day and that I googled her name to find out what she authored that she couldn't talk about at work.

I am grateful for my online buddies. I can hop on chat and they say hello with all caps and lots of exclamation points. Oh and lots of *hugs* too. It makes me feel special.

This topic is being brought up for a reason of course. My girlfriend also has trouble making friends. I am a supreme social butterfly compared to her. But we are both giving and helpful by nature and we tend to occasionally find friends that need a little bit of help. We had a blow up yesterday with these friends. Kind of in the same way other friends have dissolved. It seems there is a point that if we can no longer help, or for the moment that is, then they don't want to be our friend any more. It just happened again and my girlfriend just might be done with making friends.

I should have ended with all the friends I am grateful for because now I am down again. So on a more happy note I am grateful for alll the people that, even though I never talk to them, I know I could call them up or message them and they would help out if they could because they know I would do the same for them.