Now, this question is hard for me.
Not because I don't have friends. I have numerous friends and acquaintances I'm very fond of.
But in another sense, I don't have 'good friends'.
Not in the sense like, someone who knows me inside and out and would do anything for me.
I don't have those types of friends, and I don't know why. I have some theories, but I don't know for sure. Might never really know.
The Quiet Child
As a young child, I always felt separate from other people in some way. I spent a lot of time alone, having whole conversations that I knew were in my mind, but when it came to having real conversations with real people, there was a sort of disconnect for me. They were the quantum physics beneath the order of the visible universe, slippery and unpredictable. I wanted everything ordered.
I could talk to anyone in my home about anything, and I did. But at school, at church, anywhere outside my home - silence. The thought of sharing anything was too stressful, since I didn't really know them, or how they would react. So I was the great Stone Face in public. A very, very solitary child.
I didn't like it. I wanted to talk as easily as everyone else seemed to. They were making friends, and I could not. This was a problem I spent a lot of time pondering.
First of all, it made me very vulnerable to bullies - I was targeted from a very early age. It also made me vulnerable to people choosing me as their friends, whom I didn't really want to befriend, but who I would cling to because the alternative of no friends was more terrible.
Second, I did want to get to know people better, but I felt so painfully aware of my inability to converse that it was easier not to. Mentally, I lived in a black box I could not break myself out of, and I knew if I stayed there, I would probably harm myself.
Songbird
So I got desperate, and I joined the school choir in middle school.
I'd sung in church and on the radio long enough to know I had a good voice. I had a good enough voice that I could audition for the advanced choirs, and get in. So I sang my heart out, and it helped. I faced the frightening prospect of singing in front of people, and got through that terror and embarrassment. I even had people who knew my name, and would say something to me now and again, like real friends. Now I could perform, but my singing voice wasn't my speaking voice. I couldn't exactly sing in class.
I spoke so infrequently, in fact, that the sound of my own voice in my ears surprised me, and I would retreat again when called upon to speak, because I didn't recognize these sounds in this environment.
This continued clear up through the middle of high school, when I moved to Maryland - again, ripping up roots and starting all over again. So, so hard for me to do that, but we did it every few years. My dad liked moving.
Drama Queen
Drama wasn't singing - it was talking, and conversing in a controlled, scripted way. I thrived on that as well. The people in drama weren't afraid to talk, and they weren't formal about it, so I started making friends with people I really liked. I thought I'd finally conquered my little black box.
But no...
Drama became the only class where I talked - I still couldn't make friends or talk in any other class, to my eternal frustration. This led me to believe that the only place I could be 'normal' was in a drama environment, so I decided to become an actress.
Long Letters from the Edge
When I moved to New York, my friends at home wanted to write to me, so I wrote lots of letters, to my family and my friends...anyone who would write to me. This felt much more comfortable to me, because I could craft what I wanted to say, and sound so much more intelligent and witty than I did in a face-to-face or phone conversation, where I couldn't control what was happening so much.
The problem with letters was that no one wrote as much as I did, or in such detail. So soon they would taper off, with their apologies that they were terrible at writing, and I was alone again.
I didn't stop writing letters though. I met and married my husband through letters. I had to quit drama eventually though, because I didn't like people staring at me, and I was getting called upon to do improv work, which I hated. If I couldn't get scripted work AND control that script, I didn't want any part of it.
The Internet Introvert
Then the Internet plodded by, and I jumped on eagerly. Social media? That's for me, boy! I made friends like crazy - all I had to do was be witty and nice in short posts, and friends flocked to me. Many friends were even people I'd never met in real life, and still have never met to this day. It was exhilarating!
But not enough. There's a different, more robust energy to talking in person with someone, but it's these interactions that are much harder to manage for me. Again, pieces of the puzzle were missing.
Today
Probably my mother and my husband are my best and longest friends - my mother for my entire life, and my husband for about a quarter of a century now. I talk more at home than I do out of my home, and more online than I do in real life, although now small talk no longer holds the same terror for me it once did. At my work and at church, I'm still mostly silent, and I still feel guilty about that somewhat, though I don't need to talk on a regular basis. Church is a little bit better than work.
Church and work people know a lot of minutia about me, and online people know some too. My family knows more still. But my journals probably know more than that, and I don't even write everything down. I still keep a piece of myself, to myself, and only God really knows that part.
Phone calls still give me tiny anxiety attacks, and I tend to avoid them whenever I can - I still write down an outline of how I want the call to go, just to avoid those long pauses, and I still tend to rush right over people as I talk, but I'm working on that.
Talking in person can be fun, but very wearing, so I still mostly write.
Bosom Friends
I loved the movie "Anne of Green Gables" (the first one) for the relationship Anne had with Diana Barry. I tried to have relationships like that, but I never felt able to. There was always something inside that was in the way.
Honestly, I don't know if the problem is other people or me. It has to be me - other people are able to do it, and I don't know how they do it, any more than I know how my mother is able to sit down on a bus next to a total stranger, and somehow they end up talking like they're the world's oldest friends. That's a super power I will probably never have.
But I'll keep trying - I don't believe in the inevitability of any genetic-or-otherwise condition anymore.
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