idk, my bff Jill?
My mother once told me “Everyone needs friends.”
At the time I was about nine or ten years old. We had recently moved to a new town, which I thought was a great adventure right up until school started and my fifth-grade classmates promptly shunned me. After several months of heartbreak and humiliation, I thought it best to give up on the BFF crusade.
Since my elementary school days I’ve had a few close friends here and there, but for the most part interpersonal relationships are not my forte. This used to bother me tremendously. There was a time when I wanted nothing more in the world than to be popular. I longed for my peers to like me and want to spend time with me.
Nowadays I couldn’t care less.
I realized recently, after patching things up with an estranged friend, that I don’t crave phone calls, shopping adventures, gossip sessions, or dinner dates. Really all I want out of a friendship is something more like a pen pal. I want to be able to write to someone and ask questions or share secrets and have the person write back. Anything more involved than that begins to annoy me.
I was surprised to discover this about myself. But the more that I think about it, the more I see that I’ve always been a wallflower. Part of me worries about my tendency to observe life rather than participate in it. I think I think too much and act not enough. Sometimes I get angry with myself for not being a “social butterfly” like my sister. More often I get angry with myself for wanting to be anything other than the person I am.
The person I am. There’s another post entirely.
I’m glad the aforementioned friend and I came to a reconciliation. I really am. But in the grand scheme of things, I guess it’s not as important to me as I thought it would be.
After all, if I want intelligent conversation with thoughtful and articulate individuals, I need not look further than my own blog. (Thank you, readers!)
I’m officially putting my name in the hat to be your “penpal”. 
I do tend to be a ’social butterfly’, but as I’ve gotten older, I realize that I really don’t have a large number of close friends. I have co-workers that I enjoy hanging out with and friends that I hang out with on my teacher’s union activities, but my REAL friends could be counted on one hand. I can get along with just about anyone, and if I’m in a social situation, I can pretty much make conversation with anyone. But as far as exchanging secrets and phone numbers? pfft….not so much.
Holly, there are two of us who think similarly? I don’t know if the world can handle that.
Jewelz, good to know!
Finally! Someone who thinks like me! While I’ve had close friends, while I’ve had best friends, and while I’ve had no friends and just a string of acquaintances, I seem to be happiest in my current state–I have a boyfriend with whom I love, but I still just have acquaintances and those who I talk to online and that’s it–And I like it that way! I get annoyed very easily, most people just bug me after a while, I don’t like going out, I don’t like gossiping much, shopping I can do with the boyfriend. I think that if you’re happy where you are, you don’t have much to worry about and you also must be happy with yourself or all is lost.