What's a friend?

So I have been thinking a lot lately about friends. I want to move. We are in no position to move or anything but I seriously hate the house we are in and am always looking at other houses online longing for the day when we can move. But I want my daughter to stay at her same school because she has got a great group of little friends. I know kids are resilient and she will make more but it got me thinking about my friends. I have one that I have always known. I love that we went from preschool-high school and part of college together. We still are in touch. And it is a great friendship. Even though we have been apart for months at a time sometimes years we can just pick up like we never left off. People are funny. There are some that think I just have SO many friends and one who actually told me they wouldn't know anyone if it wasn't for me. But are all these people really my friends? What makes them a friend? We talk at a party, go to the same church or I watch their kids for that last minute dentist appt? I don't know. I get invited to random parties, outings and what not and used to be SO excited to be included. But as life happens and you evaluate these people, I wonder why they invite me. I am not included in conversations, when I try to join in my thoughts are contested and 'in their mind' proven wrong and I feel like an outsider just watching the conversations around me. What do I have in common with them, except maybe children or religion? Is that suppose to make us instant friends? What about our personal likes, interests? I don't feel connected to them in that way.


This doesn't feel like very good friends to me. My husband is great with analogies and put it this way. We have 'friends' that are in different fields as 'flowers', and we are the bees they buzz back and forth between the different flower patches, but since we are not a flower we don't have anywhere we really belong. I think this is pretty true to reality. Sometimes I wish I could just be a flower in someones set garden then other times I just want to be a mole and go into hiding underground.

My perspective of a true friend is someone you can call up at 3 am and say I need you can you come over. And with no questions asked they will be there, because they are your friend after all. I feel that I have probably seven people that would do this for me. Not even my family has made this list of people. Sadly six of the seven live outta state. Maybe that is all I need but sometimes it can make life frustrating. With my lack of apparently interesting things to be friends with me, I might just loose the one I have here. Scare em away..

Far too many IOUs that I will never get repaid from others in the different flower gardens because I'm not of highest priority in their garden. Makes you question why you ever wanted to be in that garden in the first place. So maybe I will be a mix of making my own flower garden and being the mole that lives in there.