No friends?

I can't recall the names of the study at the moment; however, I remember reading that the average American has only one or two people whom they feel they can trust. These people normally are family members (moms) who you feel will love you unconditionally no matter what. (Side note) In my sociology class, we also learned that mothers are the only people who can ever love their children unconditionally. I don't find this information shocking at all as we live in a society that is dependent of technological communication. Our main way of keeping in touch it others is through text-messages, Facebook, emails, twitter, etc. That being said, I don't think many people have "real" friends.

Friends, as I have often found in the past are just people who use you for their convenience. When these individuals are bored, they want to hang out with you, when they need your assistance, they call upon you for help. When your friend want to show off/impress someone or needs to be consoled, that’s when you are sleeked out in their life. Why do you think that so many people starting relationships go haywire? However, when they are going through relationship drama, they call you to vent or complain about their significant other. 

I digress.....

I have never been a social butterfly. I consider myself even-tempered (a bit serious), I can be funny at times. However, I have never been able to "draw" people towards me. I can't really attract and keep friends. I never understood why, I would often go out of my way for them, change plans, or just "go with the flow" in order to please people. But it would always result in the same fashion; I would be called a bitch, boring, fat-ass, etc. I thought there was a huge problem with me. Endless of times I would sit and cry my eyes out in front of my mom. Countless of times she would help me mend my open wounds. She looked me in the eye and told me, "maybe you are not the problem, but the problem is the people you chose to be friends with." Those words struck me hard. I was skeptical to believe them at first because my mom was there trying to console me.

With time, I figured that maybe my mom was right. The people who I have been choosing to be friends with do have very different views from me. They have different views and priorities in life. Even in college where everyone is trying to better them, I feel like I stand out and don't fit with the crowd. I do tend to keep to myself, but that is because at one point in time, I lost faith in people. I no longer wanted to assimilate with a group of egocentric people who only care about material worth. Also, compared to the people I go to school with, I have a completely different lifestyle. I live at home, have little children in the house that I help care for, work, and currently am taking on two internships. It’s very difficult to juggle all these items and find time for family and some "free time" for myself where I can go out and have fun. So most of the time when my school friend as me to go places, I already have a schedule down. It honestly sucks because from so many times that I have said "I really can't" they don't even bother asking me anymore. From then on, we even loose communication.

The good thing is that I try to not let things like this bother me. I tend to be more family oriented. I'm trying to talk to my younger sisters more and be friendlier with them, because I want them to come to me when they have problems. They are little but they are NOT children, they are my family with their own individual concerns that happen to be at a different level from mine. I want to show them that friends come and go, however to find a good friend, you may search the universe and end up finding that you didn't have to go farther than your household to find a great companion.