It comes at a price...

Growing up I didn't have too many friends.  I lived on a block with mostly boys.  I wasn't allowed to really go off the block (though I did).  My mother was an agoraphobe with panic attacks.  She didn't want to drive me to friends' houses. After she died, dad wanted us to either be at school or at home (or a neighbor's house) because we were latchkey kids and he worked almost 2 hours away from home.

The result was that I am not the most social of butterflies, not the person everyone wants to know and be around.  I tend to have a very fluid idea of what friendship is -- that people can come in and out of your life, and so long as they treat you well, and you share some common interests, you can be friends.

Over the years I've been able to further develop my idea of what friendship is because I have had some people in my life show me what being a friend looks like.  To quote Pepe the Prawn:

A friend picks you up
when everyone else
lets you down, okay. 

It's not just when everyone else lets you down, but it's sometimes when you let yourself down, or when life lets you down.  In other words, friends are the people that come around not because it's convenient for them, or they need something, they're the people that come around when they have something to give.

I've tried to live up to this -- putting the people I truly love and want to be friends with before my own wants and needs because taking care of my friends brings me joy.

When I realized that friendship is more than just about convenience, I lost many friends and/or grew wary of them.  I began to realize the people who came around when they wanted something but were nowhere to be found when I was sliding into an endless pit of despair.

That being said, and the point of this post is that sometimes I lead a very lonely life (most of my friends are people I work with/play softball with, or live far away (especially b/c I don't have a car)).  This is why the refrigerator is my boyfriend.  This is why i didn't have plans for Friday night, this is why I don't have plans for tonight.

When people make plans, I hate inviting myself.  I am an absolute wreck when I host people (especially if I'm having a party and no one shows up for the first half hour).  I still get the feeling that people are my friends out of pity. I know that feeling is completely irrational.

It's really easy to say that you have no friends, no boyfriend because you're fat.  However the only reason that could be true is because of the negative vibes that attitude puts out.

If I am an insular person and the fat is my insulation, what will happen when I lose the fat?  I fear and anticipate that I won't have as many reasons to keep people at arm's length (for their protection and mine).