That means, in essence, that I have never in my life truly had a friend. I've had acquaintances. Some have been quite close acquaintances, but that's the most any of them has ever been. There has always been that wall between them and true friendship, between them and me, always some part (or parts) of me I've never shown them. I haven't trusted any of them with all of me. Ever.
This is not their fault. I've known some wonderful people, and many of them would I'm quite sure have made terrific friends. The problem is that I've never let them. It's not them (well, okay, it's not always them--into every life the occasional jerk must fall--but it's almost always not them), it's me.
This is not a fun realization to have. I wish this weren't the case. But as I said to someone last night, "The beautiful and terrible thing about reality is that it doesn't give a damn what I wish."
Meanwhile, I think of the old saying, "You can't teach an old dog new tricks." If I were a dog, in people years I'd be fast approaching my 301st birthday. That's one seriously old dog, and I don't foresee any new tricks coming along anytime soon.
I've been this way for the better part of 43 years. I don't like my odds for changing that now.
I've even had a couple of people--truly wonderful people--ask me lately whether I'm okay, and I just can't bring myself to "trouble" them with listening to my whining over all of this. Even as I'm choosing not to talk to them about it I know I am simply perpetuating the cycle. I don't doubt the sincerity of their concern, but I still just can't justify to myself taking up their time and energy to whine and wallow in my self-pity at them. They have lives of their own; they deserve better than to be bothered with my mental refuse.
It might be hurtful to them for me to tell them that, because their concern is genuine, and I'm basically saying that I--a person about whom they care (at least insofar as I've let them know me)--am unworthy of that concern. I've learned that at least some people take that personally, and find it hurtful. They're offering me genuine friendship, and I'm refusing them. That stinks.
I would hope they could understand that my refusal and my lack of trust in them in no way bespeak a shortcoming in them. Rather, it's a
shortcoming in me. It's something I simply never learned how to do--and indeed I learned quite early and quite clearly that letting people see the real me was a terrible idea that would not be well-received, to say the least. After so many decades of that pattern, I've had pitifully little success, and great amounts of frustration, in trying to learn a new pattern. It's a new trick, that also involves unlearning an old trick, of which this old dog has not achieved the basics, let alone mastered.
I'm starting to doubt that I ever will or ever can unlearn the old trick or learn the new one. If that's the case, I should really just get used to having people in my life who are, at best, acquaintances and to remaining isolated and disconnected from other humans.
That's one of the very, very few tricks--the staying alone trick--at which I am exceedingly good. I'm so good at that I can even stay alone when I'm ostensibly at a party or in a long-term relationship. That's expertise, there.
