Friendship to me is a mysterious thing. To be honest, I don't completely understand how it works, since I've not had much experience of it.  My over-protective mother would not let us visit other children when we were little, in junior high no one wanted to risk also being beaten up & in much of high school, I was invisible. There was one glorious period in sophmore year when I had a small group of friends, which remains a golden memory.

    At that time, I had a naive belief that people stayed friends forever, so it was a huge emotional trauma when they stopped talking to me for unexplained reasons. It took years to get over, but eventually I learned from it & surprisingly, didn't get bitter.

   Since then, I've learned that there are different degrees of friendships & sometimes they only last a short time.Often one must avoid certain subjects that might endanger the friendship. While I still don't understand all the rules, I do know that being friends takes a certain amount of work, namely that one must make the effort to keep regular lines of communication open & be willing to move past disagreements. I'm rather mellow about the latter, but am still having trouble with talking to people as much as I ought. This leads to misunderstandings, since my lack of response looks to friends as uncaring; when it's really time management, bad moods, a poor internet connection & occasionally too overwhelmed with Life. My sister believes that friends drain her energy, but she's always had more of them that she knows what to do with. To me they are still uncommon enough that I don't take them for granted, but my people skills or lack thereof often makes others think that I do. It's ironic that when I'm most silent is when I'm usually most in need of the warmth of friendship.

   I know that I will continue to learn about the process of being friends as long as I live. It's a baffling, but quite precious thing.