Thank Goodness for Friends!!!

Do you ever wonder what life would be like without friends? That is a scary thought.

As I get older I realize that my girlfriends slowly diminish from my social life as they have boyfriends, husbands, families, etc. It is amazing how life can change so quickly. I went through my first 18 years with many different friends but had two close friends when I graduated high school. Ironically they both have the same name...strange! I still keep in touch with them but not as much as I would like to. One is out on the East Coast and the other is in the West and boy do we all have very different lives.

After high school I moved to the East Coast and met many people. I became close to a few girls in particular. I miss close friendships. They seem to be so comforting when things just aren't right. I had a total of 5 close friends at different times when I lived in New Jersey. Each one was at a slightly different time, but they all seemed to overlap. I still am in contact with 3 on a regular basis, but the other two are harder to keep in contact with.

Why is it so hard to keep in contact with friends??? I guess we all just become so busy in our world that we tend to lose touch with those we once cared about so much.


After being in New Jersey for seven years, I moved to Minnesota where I met a great friend. She will always be close to my heart even though we have drifted apart. I still consider her a great friend and always will. I met my ex when I first moved here and immediately fell into the trap of not doing much with anyone unless him and I were hanging out. It wasn't that I wanted to just hang out with him, but I felt that I was tired of the bar scene and the clubs so when people I knew would want to go out there, I just didn't feel like it.

Slowly I started to realize that I was not making any friends in my new home and part of the problem was I wasn't allowing it. The first time my ex and I broke up I started hanging out with some friends from work. One girl in particular became a really great friend. Sadly she soon got a boyfriend and disappeared from any social life. I expanded my horizons and slowly ventured out with new friends I made at work. Then as I finally thought I was getting somewhere with my friends, my ex wrote a sweet letter that said he wanted me back and that he was wrong, etc. I of course took him back because I wasn't over him and somehow fell back into the "she has a boyfriend" trap. I feel like if you have a boyfriend, somehow your friends think you don't want to have a social life with them anymore. I have always hated that because I knew that I still needed my new friends more than anything.

My friends.... well, my friends all work at my job, because I have yet to meet anyone outside my job. This is hard because my friends have friends outside of work and have lived in Minnesota much of their lives. This sometimes makes me feel like a burden. I tend to over think things more than I should. I think, hmm, I keep calling people but they never call me, that must mean that really are either really busy, or really not wanting to hang out with me. See this is a problem....if I go around thinking that about friends, then people are bound to get annoyed and yes they will eventually not want to hang out. This is something I need to stop. I don't know why I get so passionate about friendship... I guess I just long for a best friend, someone to share everything with, just like I did in high school.

I have to realize that that was then and this is now~ It isn't easy moving to a new city and making new friends... but I have to tell myself to look how far I have come with making so many friends in two years. I am back to being single again as the guy who thought he made a mistake before, decided that he still didn't love me. That is okay because I know that we weren't good together, but I do know that I want a friend, guy or girl, that can be my best friend. I want to share my good times and bad.

In the meantime----- I am going to enjoy the many new friends I have made and the old friends that I can still say hi to. Because no matter what there will be those few that I will always hold on to, even if we talk a few times a year.