Finding A Friend

I find it difficult to make friends (wow that is hard to say). I will justify this by saying that it is NOT hard for me to make friends, I am a very friendly person, it is just difficult for me to relate and get to a level of trust where I consider someone a friend.
Growing up I made friends very easily. I was easy going, talkative, a little bit rebellious, ready for fun. When I graduated into high school, things changed for me. When the politicing started and the hidden agendas behind friendships appeared, when it became important in who you knew and who was considered a friend, I found myself unable to maneuver in the bureaucracy of teen life. When everyone is searching for their identity, struggling with anonymotity or bravado, peacekeeper or troublemaker, I succumbed to the stress of it and became very inclusive in my friendships. I was neutral in the politics, stayed at arms length of the clics and groups and confided in a small number of guys and girls who were less concerned with who was popular this week than where we would meet for coffee and a chat!

At 17 an amazing girl stumbled into my life and it really was a stumble! We were both being wronged by the same boy. He had managed to date both of us at the same time mainly because we went to different schools, it was a typical high school drama. This girl however was anything but typical, she called me up out of the blue, told me what was up and invited me out for a coffee to chat about revenge. We became fast friends, much to the dismay of the communal boy and our friendship quickly blossomed beyond the boy who brought us together. The year that followed was typical girl stuff, movies, coffee, all night phone chats, boyfriends and in March of 1994, at 18, we went on a week long trip to Montreal. We had a blast and I knew that she was a different kind of friend, someone I could be myself with, no games, no politics, no need to be anything more that who I was. In June of 1994 she succumbed to the affects of Cystic Fibrosis and my world fell apart. I felt very alone in the world of teen and the genuineness of her friendship and her ability to be a friend became an amplified emptiness in my life. Her genuine friendship became a model for me of how I should be a friend and how someone could be a friend to me.
Fast forward to 2002 when Flynn died, most of my friends disappeared.
Fast forward to present, I am very lucky in the friends that are currently in my life, they are very special people, very accepting of who I am, unconditional in their love and respect. It amazes me the people that have walked, moved in or emailed into my life. I have found friends in places that I least expected, when I was not looking but usually when I needed them the most.