You've Got to Have Friends…

And I am all alone
There is no one here beside me
And my problems have all gone
There is no one to deride me

But you got to have friends
The feeling’s oh so strong
You go to have friends
To make that day last long
I had some friends but they’re gone
Someone came and took them away
And from the dusk till the dawn
Here is where I’ll stay

Standing at the end of the road, boys
Waiting for my new friends to come
I don’t care if I’m hungry or bored
I’m gonna get me some of them…

Bette Midler, “You’ve Got to Have Friends”

I’ve had so many difficulties with friends letting me down in the past, and I really got to the point where I just didn’t really care any more whether or not I had friends around. I’ve been envious of others’ friendships at times, although I have “forever friends” who will always be there for me.

I have one of those rare evenings alone tonight, with all the boys out of the house, so I’ve got my “Sister’s Mix” CD on, the music cranked up, and am enjoying this collection of songs I’ve put together about sisterhood for when I feel lonely. My own sister was six years older than me, and had her bipolar episodes starting in her teens, so we never really got to have a strong relationship. I wasn’t really close to my mom either, since she tended to be hypercritical of me. I related much more strongly to my dad, and to men in general, and seem to understand them so much better than women. I never got the way women could be so catty to each other and still claim to be friends, the way my best friend turned on me and refused to speak to me.

So do I have to have friends? Well of course, and I do. But not the kind of friends I call on the spur of the moment, or when I’m upset about things. I have friends I see at pretty carefully arranged times and places, when I am in control of who I am and in control of the situation. I work very hard these days to make sure people don’t see me in any out of control moments — an artifact of the bipolar manic episodes I had. I don’t have those moments now, but I need to be sure nobody sees me that way ever again, knowing that there are so few who could understand it, and fewer still who tolerate it and would stay with me no matter what.

I think if you’ve never had the experience of someone literally just shutting you out of their life forever, you can’t possibly understand what a painful, hurtful thing it is to do to someone else. Perhaps that’s why those people found it easy to do to me, but, it’s something I will never do to someone else, ever. I understand that people have to have friends — real friends, not those who simply say they are or who are only there for the good times, then walk away when things get tough.