What is a friend?

[Trilby]

Sarge---you know you have friends here. Cyberspace is a bit different, yes, but we ARE here.

When I was a teen and in my 20's I had loads of friends ---- so many I couldn't properly attend to all of them. One year I went to six different christmas parties; now I go to zero. I think it's a combination of age, time and the nature of people. I've always admired people who had friends since childhood but my two best buds moved away and I changed schools so many times....and I was clinically depressed and stoned in HS so you can imagine the 'friends' I made there. Nobody really lasting; they're either dead, in jail or going to AA three times a day. I called one of my very best buds up about three months ago and the woman HUNG UP ON ME. I hadn't talked to her for ages so I don't know what I did; people change. Then you pretend the people you work with are friends---and maybe some of them really ARE---but usually it's work that glues you together and if you change jobs or shifts--poof! they are gone. Not b/c they don't like you it's just that everyone is so busy busy busy it's hard to take time to actually BE with somebody. I learned a hard lesson. A girl i worked with whom I thought of as a friend told me, "People you work with aren't your friend; they're your co-workers," and bazinga. It hit me.

There are some people (two? three?) I can go to with my sob stories and first world problems, but I'll never have the closeness I used to feel when I was younger and the world was a lot shinier. Maybe, someday, I will, like the women on Who the Fuck did I Marry? find a real man to have a real relationship with.

But i'm not betting on it.

this IS a rough time of year---I hated Christmas for a long time; alone in my one bedroom walkup, working 11-7am, my boys gone, my drugs the only comfort I had. I would sit and listen to the clock tick and think of killing myself. It was horrible. I was sooooooooo lonely and sad. I shot demerol so I would be unconscious.

but you know what? Slowly, very slowly, it got a bit better. Things got a little less painful (and things were pretty painful --- even the air motes hurt my skin) and I couldn't off myself b/c of the boys.

People are in our lives for a reason or a season and then they move on and other people take their place; better people usually, more enlightened people to help show us the way...and then THEY leave but OTHERS come....unclench your fist to accept the new thing.

Hugs to you Sarge. You're a good guy.