Realistically, if I count the people that I'd feel comfortable calling up and hanging out with, I have three friends.
I've never been a friend collector. In fact, I believe three has been my ideal number for a long, long time. In high school I had three close friends. Those same friends lasted for the first two years of college. The year away for college reduced that number, but I did get a temporary friend up there keeping me more or less at three (lets call it 2.5).
Photo school was probably my high water mark. I kept one of my old high school friends, added a work friend, and met a new high school friend. All three of these friends had several semi-friends involved.
In Chicago I had one friend there, and two long distance friends. Back at home I was reduced to two friends. Photo work brought that number back up to 2.5. Those two friends are still friends. The longest lasting friendships I've ever had. During trucking school I met another friend that still occupies that space. Nursing school did not introduce any friends, and work hasn't introduced any new friends.
So... I have three friends. There are past friendships that I could more or less easily start back up, but I couldn't just call them up to hang out. The first time we 'hung out' would be a catch up session. So looking back at it, I met my last friend in 2006. For clarity's sake, I'm not including any of my friends here. As much as I like, admire, and have friendly feelings toward Jennifer, Dee, Joanne, Simone, or any of my other 'Caitlyn' friends.... well hanging out is a prerequisite for me to consider someone a friend. And that's a physical barrier I've yet to even consider crossing. I also don't include so called 'facebook' friends.
I've been told by my friends that I'm fairly gregarious. That adding me to a social occasion makes it better. Going bowling... meh. Going bowling with 'Calvin'... hell yeah! But I'm honestly only really social with my friends. Consider my three current friends and how we went from strangers to friends:
E. E and I went to photo school together. We really hit it off as friends in the second semester. We had many similarities that kept us coming back and working together on various projects. Honestly if it wasn't for the closeness of the entire program, we probably wouldn't have been quite as close. He and I, during out last year, decided to tackle Chicago together. We invited several other photo students to join us, but no one was interested. It was living together at Chicago that firmed up our friendship.
A. A and I met at the photo company I worked for. He was the boss, and I quickly moved up to be his second. Like E, we had a lot in common. But we were also perfectly filled voids in the other. I was more personable and in the moment. He was more strict and forward thinking. The intensity of working so closely with someone for two years bonded our friendship firmly. We'd work 40 hours a week in the office and then spend another 30-40 hours together at an event.
A & E are easily my best friends. And as I think about it, I believe I have to add 'ever' to that statement. E lives on the west coast, A lives in Dallas, and yet we're still close. We all still long to hang out.
A2 I met at tucking school. We both passed and got hired by the same company. We got picked up together and driven to the headquarters worked through their minute training program together, and were driven to out trucks together. When on the road, we would call each other and share our days. Where A and I were bonded with being so intensely close to each other, A2 and I were bonded with absolute loneliness and being each other's life line.
Situations out of my control have set me up to meet my friends. I've met them at school and at work. I've never met a person in a social setting that ended up being a friend. Never.
I'm not in school now and if I do continue in on in my education it will probably be through an online process. Not much chance of meeting more than a short term friend there. At work... well I'm certainly friendly with several people there. But if I stopped working there, I'd probably never see them again. We never cross that work barrier. We're friends because we're working in close proximity to each other. Part of that is my social situation. I'm a single 40 year old man living with his mother. All of my friends at work are married. All of them have children. There isn't a lot of social opportunities to bring us closer.
Even the work schedule (the work schedule that I love) hampers any opportunity to grow closer to my work friends. Getting out of work at 10pm doesn't leave much time to 'go hang out' afterwards. Especially since I live about an hour away from work. It's not as though any of us want to go to the bar and hang out in our scrubs, and it's not as though I keep a spare set of clothes in the car.
It's only been a year at work. Both E and A2 weren't really considered anything more than 'work/school' friends in that time span. But I don't feel that spark with anybody at work. I just don't. G is a great guy, but he's so focused on his family that I don't think that we'll ever get close as outside of work friends. J is nice, but she's a young lady and has her already established social circles set up. She also has a baby that just passed it's first year of life. B just hired in a few months ago and seems particularly sociable, but he lives further from work than I do, is married, has a young son (I think he's around 6)... and really we haven't had enough time to learn about each other except as nurses. I don't know him as a man. He doesn't know me as a man.
I'm not part of any club. I don't have hobbies that draw me to other people. And outside of work, I don't have any thing intense that would draw me close to somebody. There is no "Hey, we're stuck together for this time and will be stuck together again and again for a time, so we might as well be friends' situations.
And if I'm going to be honest with myself, I have to believe that if I'm ever going to meet that special person who will become a lover and possibly even a wife.... I think that type of relationship would develop FROM a friendship. So if I don't think I'm going to find many (if any at all) new friends, then I'm also looking down that lonely road that states I'll not likely to find any lovers.
I don't know where this all leads me. It's just something that was on my mind and thinking it through and writing it out hasn't done anything except firm up what I thought in an unclear and undefined way....
I'm likely to remain 'alone'
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