I have come to understand today, more than before I reckon, that I don't have one single friend left. I have people I can eat with and people I can drink with, I have people to discuss books with and people to talk music with, I have people who would listen to me tell jokes and laugh genuinely and people who would pay to listen to me talk seriously.

I have some new friends, who are acquaintances who showed kindness and kindred spirit but they are too new to participate in my context with any amount of conviction. I have a couple of very old friends, who are now so far removed from my immediate context that it would be unjustified for me to attempt bridging the gap just to be able to address it.

The rest of them, old or new, who would perchance read this and think, 'why would she say that, I'm her friend, and I could've been there' are, I believe with good reason, more concerned with allaying their guilt for not being there already and for clearing up their own conscience, than, in deed, being there for me. They're better for IG presence, it occurs to me now.

And in all this sociality, I don’t really have a friend left. I cannot think of anyone whom I can call right now, today, at this moment, and say, I need you. I need to talk. I need my friend. Come to think of it, for all the errands I run for everyone around me, for all the kindness and love I give out to almost everyone I cross paths with, for all the unconditional humanity I offer up when faced with the possibility to do so, I am quite appalled and sadly astounded to see no one really returning that. In all this good-doing, it seems I have not been able to cultivate one single relationship which would stand by me and behind me and let me feel assured in its fixedness.

I have written about this sort of stuff before. It eludes me entirely how others - just everyone, really - are able to keep their friendships going for years and years without falling prey to such (to my mind) fairly realistic hurdles of human interaction as I have become wont to encountering with every friend I make.

How is it that in attempting to understand fickle and ineffable human emotions, like a whole spectrum of them, I have completely stripped myself off the requirements, the qualifications necessary for keeping a friendship functional?

That, to me, is like studying literature for one's entire life only to come out of the journey absolutely inept at writing a single, tenable essay on why people write. Or read. I'm not sure which works better in this analogy as I'm most certainly not a writer, and I am failing, evidently, as a reader too.

I suspect there will be one or two comments now, attempting relief but mostly moved by how raw this confession was, how painful in its honesty and confessional spirit. Do remind yourself that it's the writing that has moved you, yet my suffering, acute and enduring as it is, does not and will not simply depreciate with momentary kindness. Much as I appreciate it. This is more at those who have taken from me, and continue to take in smaller doses, my friendship and love, neither of which are quantifiable and hence, much easier to dismiss and/or disown (the former is by far the less cruel option, by the way) and I guarantee they will not come upon this here baring of the mind, because that's not how their friendship with me lives on. It's much more surfacial, much more ostensibly there.

So.

This feels awful. It will continue to feel terrible always. A good friend should be a reward you get for being so yourself. One should not have to resort to backhanded exposé(s) and pandering pursuit of sympathy and mirroring for such warranted features of life as having a good friend. And still, here I am, with my phone and my TV and my craft projects and my books, all luxuries amassed with money but which feel incontestably good even by myself, and I cannot think of one single human being close enough to me that I can call to tell them that.

I think this might be the saddest thing I have ever said to myself in a long, long time.