The only thing worse than not knowing where she belonged was knowing where she didn’t. –Tessa Shaffer

I’ve often been critiqued regarding the fact that I have a lot of “best friends”. And honestly, while that used to really bother me because I would maintain that one could “never have too many friends”, I guess I can see the potency in the observation now. Because you see, this is one of my flaws. I allow people to get abnormally close, mostly because I am so transparent and willing to see only the good in people, and then I get really hurt when one day they wake up and decide I’m no longer worthy of their time. It’s literally happened to me about a bajillion times.

At one of my old jobs, I got really close to a bunch of the women that worked there. I told them some of my really personal secrets, was obviously very honest with them from day one, and found that being guarded really served me no purpose. I mean, this was a bunch of girls, right? Why would I feel the need to not open up? Especially when we had what I came to call “Panty Bar Confessionals”, which was when we would all gather around the store’s various “panty bars”, straightening mountains of pretty panties and gossiping about our lives. These were women I came to love, women that I undeniably trusted, and women who I considered to be my closest friends.

And honestly, some of them really were. Some of them I even maintain friendships with to this day. Like literally, I would say that about 80% of the people I currently know and interact with, I met in that store. They’re all pretty great, beautiful, and caring women. Women who were, for the most part, a lot younger than me, and opened up their lives to me. And as I am essentially, a super transparent individual, I did the same. To this day, if I walk in that store, a couple years now since I’ve worked there, they all greet me with smiling faces. It’s like I just saw them the day before, like no time has passed, welcoming my child into their arms like she was one of theirs. Quite frankly, I couldn’t really ask for a better group of acquaintances.

And while I hate to use that word “acquaintances”, that’s primarily what a lot of them have become. Time has a way of changing people and it seems as though, with every day that passes, that life is getting further and further behind me. With some of them, I remain super close, but for the most part, they’re just pretty, little thumbnails on Facebook. And while that makes me sad, I feel like that’s just part of “growing up”. People change, they move away, and they create their own lives separate from the life you had once lived adjacent to them.

And that’s all okay. That’s normal, human behavior, I think.

I used to think the worst thing in life is to end up all alone. It’s not; the worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel all alone. –Robin Williams

But the thing is, this whole “best friend” thing gets me sometimes. I have a real problem with what I would call “absorbing” people. Because I am so transparent (which I honestly find an extremely admirable trait but I’ll get to that in a minute…), I provide my immense gift of listening to my girlfriends (and limited amount of male friends) because I mean, hello, that’s what I would want from a friend. I would want someone who would hypothetically be there at every hour of every day to listen to me whine about everything.

Starbucks messed up my drink and I’m really pissed about it? Let me text my best friend because they get me. My husband is too tired from working overnights to watch the baby so I can do a, b, and c and I’m feeling overwhelmed? Let me text my best friend because they get me. I’m not a millionaire and I’m feeling super stressed about the daily troubles of money? Let me text my best friend because they get me. My ex-boyfriend just got married in a really romantic ceremony and the bride looked like Meghan freaking Markle? Let me text my best friend because they get me.

You grabbing onto the drift here, friends?

I love listening, you guys. I love listening to origin stories (most especially), ex or current boyfriend drama, tales of deception, and gossip about the proverbial “mean girls” in life. I love learning things about people like how they met their spouse or got into their current line of work, how they turned their life around, how they decided to start the Keto diet, and what just generally makes them tick. I mean, that’s part of the reason I’m a social worker (that, and the fact that I want to help people just like me: survivors of domestic violence).

One of my absolute favorite things about my old job in child safety was that I knew everyone’s story. It was literally my job to listen to their stories, their problems, and their lives and give them my expert opinion as a domestic violence advocate. Like, I was literally paid to listen and give my thoughts. I mean, who else gets to do that besides the American Idol judges, am I right?

But being a vault can come with a price. I think that sometimes these “friends” in which I’m referring would just consider me sort of like their therapist and nothing else. Sure, they trusted me pretty much implicitly. But that’s pretty much because I’m not a gossip, I never ran around telling other people their problems, and I made it a point to only give my allegedly sound advice when they asked for it. I was never judgey because to be honest, that’s just not me, and I was more than willing to pick up the phone any time of the day or night. Just to talk. Just to listen.

And over time, what had happened with a lot of these situations, a lot of these individuals that I considered “friends”, or even “best friends”, was that listening was really all I was good for. When things were good in their relationship, in their home life, with their parents or their job, I wasn’t really needed anymore. I was really just a beacon of light when they needed someone to comfort them or listen to their drama. When their life was going well, I was no longer needed.

And I guess that’s okay, I would tell myself. As long as they’re getting what they need from me, what do I care, right? Until their lives would fall apart over and over again and they would come running back.

I started to sense a trend: I was a great friend when shit hit the fan. But I wasn’t the person they called to celebrate with. In fact, I was never really the person they called at all. I was their therapist, the person they called when they had run out of choices, when all their real friends were busy, and they realized that the only one they could get to listen to them whine was me. And after absorbing all this nonsense for people who quite frankly, didn’t really give a shit about me, I got really sick of the negativity.

Especially when they weren’t there if I needed them. It just didn’t really seem fair. I kept asking myself, “Why is no one loyal to me?” Or maybe more realistically, “Where my loyal bitches at?”

If nobody will help you, do it alone. –Michael Jordan

It really hit home for me when I had my daughter. All these people I had listened to countless times, all these girls that begged me for girl time when they wanted to cry because their boyfriends were dirt bags, none of them could be bothered to even shoot a text to say congratulations.

I’m no stranger to being alone. But I don’t prefer it. I’m one of those people who need people. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that I should probably be a little more picky with my time. Because I think the niceness of my nature allows for people to incessantly take advantage of me. And I don’t want to say that I’m naïve, because I really don’t believe that I am, but for some reason, it always takes me some time to pick up on it.

It’s just that, as earlier mentioned, I don’t really see the point in being anything but transparent. I don’t meet people I like and then decide not to tell them anything because quite frankly, that doesn’t make any sense. I mean, half of the excitement of new people is getting to know them. If you just keep your entire life hidden all the time, there’s not really anything to be excited about. I once had this friend that I considered myself pretty close to and the saddest thing of all is I know absolutely nothing about him. He was so unwilling to talk about himself that I never really learned anything that wasn’t surface. (I still don’t know what that was about but presumably, men are just distant, defiant man children.)

And maybe that’s part of the whole loyalty thing. If people don’t really want to open up to you, maybe it’s because they don’t care enough about you to do so. But here’s a thing: it’s only cute to be mysterious when you’re Don Draper. Other than that, you’re either a pathological liar or you don’t care enough about the person you’re having lunch with to have a real conversation.

Either way, no thanks.

Moral of the Crazy: The truth is that people claim to hold the virtue of loyalty as an extremely well sought after commodity. Rappers preach about it, men claim to be all about it, and Instagram wannabes are always putting up this front as if that’s all they’re about. But what’s funny is I never see these characteristics carried out in earnest. Real talk, friends? I have personally seen it maybe a handful of times and to be fair, I would say that’s where a lot of my insecurity comes from.

People are not innately loyal. At least not to me. It’s just real life. Everyone seems to incessantly have their own agenda and while you may or may not be a part of it, you’re just a means to an end. You’re just a piece in the puzzle to get them to where they really want to be. All this ride or die nonsense is just that. People are loyal to brands and causes, to the point where they won’t shop at certain grocery stores because of who they may or may not have financially supported. They will protest and whine and post Facebook statuses like their opinion on such things matter but when it comes to people, when it comes to loyalty to another human being, I’m sorry but there is no such thing.

And I don’t say this by way of a bitter diatribe about what friends have screwed me, what men have dumped me for frumpier versions, or what jobs have picked better candidates, although I probably could. Because it’s true. In my lifetime, I’ve had a solid three to five loyal people in my little circle. And even that is probably pushing it.

I do have a very select group of people that have proved loyal thus far. But beyond that, people are just kind of filler. They’re in and out. They’re obsessed with me and then they’re bored. They die for my advice on their relationships and then they get a new boyfriend and forget my number. I’m their best friend and then, I’m just nothing.

And maybe that’s what’s so wrong with the world we live in right now. Everything is a sham and people are only out for themselves. Finding friends is harder than getting a mortgage and that’s a really sad realization. People are fighting about guns and political donations and I’m like, we aren’t even nice to EACH OTHER. How do you expect the government or these big corporations to be any different…? We’re all just a number to everyone, you know what I mean?

But that isn’t to say that there aren’t good people and it isn’t to say that those good people can’t be good friends. But I think more than five good, GENUINE friends, those people who you would quantify as “ride or die”, is pretty unrealistic.

To my loyals, and you know who you are, I love you and I appreciate you bearing with the crazy. To the ones that could have been, some of you were great once; the rest of you make great blog material.

What a lovely surprise to finally discover how unlonely being alone can be. –Ellen Burstyn