True fact.

Some people will come into your life all shiny and bright and you will fall head over heels in love with them. And then they will behave in ways that strike you as beneath them. Or they will disappoint you. Or they will grow in directions you can’t fathom or follow. Or you will come to know with heart-breaking certainty that the shiny was fools gold and beneath it, they were calculating, self-serving, and mean-spirited. Or you will come to know that despite every effort on your part, they’re never going to get you. Or you will realize that you just don’t feel the ‘it’ you need to feel to keep walking with them any further.

Another true fact.

You will have very few people who are YOUR people.

They’re doing studies now on loneliness and how it’s impacted by television. You know what I’m talking about. You watch Friends reruns and you think “I wish my life were like that. I wish I had that tribe of lovely people who lived in the same building or on the same street and no matter how bad things get with me, they care. They’re there. They show up whenever they feel like without a phone call and I’m always glad to see them, and if not glad to see them, I’m, at the very least, totally delighted to tolerate them even though I’m in the middle of whatever I was doing before they showed up. And my house? Always impeccable. And if not impeccable? At least passable. And no one in my inner circle cares what my house looks like anyway so everyone can just waltz in any time of night or day and I am so ready to greet them with a smile and a hug. I probably have something freshly baked, or at least recently procured from a local bakery to serve them over fresh French pressed coffee. I am always oh soooo delighted to listen to them regale me with tales of their latest (likely disastrous) romantic adventure. I know for certain that when I need a carton of Hagen Daas and a carton of Kleenex, they are going to be there for me at all hours of the night or day.

Right? And you can’t admit to thinking that because you’d sound like a total loser, and that longing for friends like they depict on Friends makes you ineffably, unbearably lonely, which makes you watch more Friends, buy shit you see on Friends, and maybe even emulate a Friend or two because you really wish your life were like Friends.

This is the truth as I know it:

In my very real life, I don’t have friends like Friends. I have people I know just well enough to like but not so well that I find myself disgusted with them. I have people I try to love for a while despite the lies they’re telling their husbands or wives or the way they justify the way they neglect their children by calling it “Latest bizarre experiment we’re performing on our kids against their will because we’re too lazy to actually raise them”. I admit I try to love them for entirely selfish reasons. I believe myself to be a loving person so I try. But then I meet people who steal food out of their own children’s mouths or refuse to get a job despite being perfectly capable and absolutely poverty stricken. (I’m not talking about disabled people. I’m talking about perfectly capable people who would rather collect a check, who will *lie* to get that check, just so they don’t have to bother getting a job that might interfere with bingo or The Soaps or finding themselves.) I have known people who let their girlfriends become prostitutes so that they could get their fix. I have known people who hit women in places that weren’t visible so they wouldn’t get caught. I have known people who rape children.

There are the people I’ve known for twenty years that I know are adept at the social game – people who would not say shit if they had mouths full of it, but always have a warmish smile that never quite reaches their eyes. They kind of scare me, but I admit to being somewhat envious that they’ve mastered the whole “How to Win Friends And Influence People” thing.

Then there are the people who always have the eye on the bottom line, and everything they ‘offer’ has a price tag – explicitly or covertly – hung on the merchandise they pass off as their friendship. You want so badly to believe they want to be your friend that you buy everything they’re selling and then hate yourself for it later.

And there are people so broken, so fucked up beyond repair that your heart beats faster just at the mere thought of having to deal with the shit they have to deal with on a regular basis – and some of *them* are family members.

You’d think I’d have opted for crawling under a rock by now. But I haven’t. Because I’m people. As a person, I’m cursed to want people in my life. And I do want them. I just find myself really, really reluctant to love any deeper than I might love, say, a brand of ice cream. Because loving people hurts, you know? It’s exhausting and it fricken hurts!

Because people are people.

And sometimes, I need reminding, and when I need reminding the universe comes along with a two by four or a sledgehammer to bash me across the head with. And as I stand there bobbing and weaving a little from the Very Hard Smack across my Very Hard Head that contains a humanity that Very Much Wants People, I get another little reminder.

I have people. I have people who tell me when I have spinach in my teeth and toilet paper hanging out the back of my skirt. I have people who read every damned thing I write however boring it is, and people that tell me in all honesty that the shit I wrote the other day was boring. I have people who can *hear* the truth and do not hate me for it, and people from whom the truth comes like clear, cool water at a time when I’m cracked earth. I have people who call me The Metatron and mean it as a compliment. I have people who recognize the value of a friend who does not pull punches and would rather have me bruise them than pretend everything’s okay. I have people who would dig ditches to feed their kids, and I have people who do the hard work of parenting even when they don’t feel like it. I have people who have cried with me over the damage done by a pedophile. I have people who tell their stories despite the enormous risk they know they’re taking. I have people who put people over the bottom line and I have people I respect, who’ve earned my respect because they are authentic, truth-telling, no bullshit, self-aware, rocking people.

There aren’t many of them. I could count them on my fingers. They all have messy houses or neuroses about their houses. None of them look anything like Jennifer Aniston or Courtney Cox. Some of them are reading this right now.

And I’m lucky.

Because People are People and most of them suck, but the ones I love? The ones who have earned that love?

Do not.

That is all.