There are so many strangers in my past. I find myself revisiting the question "Who are you?" when I experience change in my friends, and then, given a second thought, I suddenly realize I never knew them at all. How close can you get to someone? How much should you reveal? If you don't like something they do, do you bury it down inside and secretly resent them, or do you face rejection and silence when you do speak your mind? If it's a repeating lose/lose situation, is it a friendship?

I tell you, for years I have had the gunsight of blame on me. I haven't heard an apology from anyone else in a very, very long time, and mathematically, that says that I'm usually wrong. That can't be true! Is the opposite so far from a possibility? Am I the only one who does things wrong? Look, if this was a pattern that recurred in all of my friendships, then I seriously have to look at it. It doesn't, though, and it only seems to happen when I mistakenly believe that someone wants to be my friend, but in reality they're not really interested in anything but an acquaintance. Whether it's twelve months or twelve years, I have to understand that sometimes people just aren't interested in my definition of friendship. They just want someone to talk to every now and then.