You've Gotta Have Friends

Always loved that song and Bette Midler.  I did a show one time with a guy who had lived with her during "Fiddler on the Roof".  He said she was awesome, no surprise.   Those things have nothing to do with this blog, but I'm in a chatty mood today and have no one to chat with, so lucky you.

Anyroad, I should put a disclaimer out there that this blog entry will be Sappy.  So if you're not in the mood, carry on.  Je comprends et j'taime. (Hey!  I do remember some of those 10 years of French!)

For the majority of my life, I had no friends.  That statement seems overdramatic and is perhaps a slight exaggeration (I am prone to such), but not that far off.  In each of the friend-free chapters of my life, there was always a different reason, but I still remained essentially friendless.  At the time, I didn't miss having friends.   I was too busy, or thought I was anyway, to need them.  I was fine on my own.  That's what I told myself.

The truth is, I was scared. I was scared I wouldn't be a good enough friend.  Scared people would find me so annoying and overbearing and obnoxious that they couldn't stand to be around me.  Scared that one time I would say the wrong thing and they'd never forgive me and I'd be all alone again.  So it seemed easier just to avoid people in the first place and skip all the painful shit.  The dull ache of being alone was comforting. 

Then, two years ago, when I finally ended the Bad Steve Debacle, I started attending social functions.  It was incredibly scary, you have no idea, but after a while I began to realize that nothing horrible was happening at these events.  I even started enjoying myself now and then, which was uber terrifying.  Could it be that I actually had some Companionship Value as a human being??  My mind boggled.  It has taken two years, and I am still in therapy, but I am almost to the point where I am ready to admit that I'm an okay friend and people like hanging with me. 

But the main thing I've discovered is that having friends rocks.  The support, comfort, companionship, love and solace I never got from family or relationships are there in all my friends.  I suppose this is something Everyone Else always knew, but I am just discovering it now--I feel like fucking Christopher Columbus, without the smallpox. (Clarification:  "fucking" in that last sentence is meant as adjective, not a verb, dead guys aren't my thing.)  I am truly amazed by this.  It's like discovering that a cold beer tastes good on a hot day or that sex makes you feel good.  Go Know.

I am an extremely emotional person (no, really?).  I wear my emotions on my sleeve and I speak my heart and I Thank the Theatre Gods that my friends can roll with that. 

Now, I'm not writing this so that people will validate me--I know my friends love me; I don't need constant reassurance. And this probably seems like a small thing to most people. But to me this as big as whatever that thing was that made Archimedes run down the street naked yelling "Eureka!", and I'm sure that was really, really important.   But his blog about it was probably less sappy.

I swear, next time I'll talk about legal-rule vs. college-rule notepads.  And I won't get introspective.  Well, I'll try not to.