Untitled because I couldn't decide on a good one.

I'm one of those people who is amazed when someone wants to be my friend.  I suppose someone will say it's a sign of low self esteem - maybe it is - but it's not that I don't feel worthy of friendship or that I'm not a good friend, because I am worthy and I make an excellent friend (as long as you're ok with me not kissing your behind).  No, I think it's that I'm too cynical.  I assume someone wants something from me.  I wonder what is this person getting out of our relationship.  Maybe this is why I have a small circle of friends.  I know folks who have 100's of facebook friends (which I don't confuse with having real friends because too many people confuse "hey I met you that one time" with being friends) but I tend to keep making my friends list smaller and smaller.  Since moving away from my circle last year, I've started to analyze my friendships and my ability to make new ones.  I know I'm a friend who doesn't need constant contact to reaffirm that friendship.  I can go for months without seeing my friends and my friendship doesn't wane.  But maybe that's a problem.  My husband has commented a time or two that my total lack of needing others isn't always a good thing.  I think it stems from "daddy" issues and the knowledge that it hurts when those you need aren't there when you need them so it's best to not need anyone too much.   And it's not that I don't actually need any contact with the person, I just don't have to see them to know they are still my friend. Email, text, letters, carrier pigeons, smoke signals these things all work for me.  I'm not really a phone talker unless you're family, like my black sister, who I met in college, she and I can go for months without speaking then pick up the phone and it's a gab fest that ends when the children start banging on my door telling me they're starving and asking why have I disappeared for so long.  She is more friend then family; anyone who will sit beside you while you sit by your father's death bed is family.  Most of my friendships are kept strong because of the internet, which is fitting since most of my best relationships have come from the internet (husband included).  Facebook / twitter gives me the ability to communicate with my friends daily and the interstate gives me the ability to see them when group therapy is needed.
But I guess to really analyze my ability to be a friend, I need to review friendships that have ended.  Most of my former friendships ended because that's just how life happens - two roads diverged in the woods and I took one path and they another.  No fighting, no angry words, just moving in different directions.  I don't regret when this happens. At least I don't get too upset about it. It's life. I'm only sad over a few lost friendships.  One being a friend I made in middle school.  The first time I saw this chick I knew I'd hate her.  (I have a tendency to make quick judgements about people, and she was a bitch in my mind) but then we started to talk, and laugh, and that was it. She was my best friend.  We remained friends through high school (luckily our last names were close in the alphabet so we tended to be in similar homerooms) and even into college.  Again this friendship wasn't one where we had to see each other every day or one where communication was a huge issue.  We were friends, plain and simple.  And then I got married. And everything changed.  I was young and silly and thought being married meant I had to focus all my attention on my husband so there was no room or need for a friend and I turned my back on her.  I tried to do this to my black sister, but like all good family members, she wasn't having any of that and wouldn't let me phase her out.  But the friend of my youth needed me and I wasn't there for her so our friendship ended.  But luckily, through the power of facebook, I have found her again and I am so proud of the person she has become, and it makes me regret missing out on all the years that have made her the person she is.
Maybe that's what what I need to learn from this introspection of my ability to be a friend.  It's not my ability to need people that's the problem.  It's my ability to be there when others need me.   I think I'm a fairly responsible person, I think I'm the kind of person who will be there when my friends need me, but maybe knowing that I'm not always a good person keeps me from accepting friendship. 

Wow this is some deep thoughts. . . I think I'll go google some happiness to over come all this psychoanalysis crap.

Here look at this and smile - I know I did.