Friends R Friends 4 Ever...or so I thought

Ah the rights of passages. How much we longed for some of them? How sad some are now? First as girls we waited until that first period. We thought we'd be so cool. We'd be like everyone else. Now many-many-MANY years later, its not so cool. In fact it's annoying.

Then there was the first date, the first kiss, the first job, the first apt, the first time you stood on your own without help from the parental units. All of them were glorious.

And now, the saddest rights of passage of all...your friends moving on without you. I'm not sure exactly what's happening. I am sure I probably have something to do with it, but can't quite put my finger on the surprisingly sad situation.

I once prided myself on having many friends. We all hung out together, liked the same things, managed to get along even when we didn't always agree. Then slowly, or was it quickly, everything changed. One by one they got married, had kids and fell off the face of the earth. Or, they get a new significant other and fall off the face of the earth. And suddenly, without 30 days notice - which I think is only fair - I don't fit into their lives anymore.

And what of the friends who aren't dating, how did I become the LAST person they call? How did it happen that I, somehow, don't fit into their lives either? Did I do that? Or did we just grow apart - not by distance, but by emotion?

I sit and sort through the memories of the friendships that once were. Trying desperately to find an ounce of explanation, a thread of knowledge that might shed some light. When we were friends we seemed to mirror each other in our morals and feelings and beliefs? How then do we now not mirror that now? Is it so easy for people to toss a friendship aside, assured there will be another waiting down the street? And why am I the one being tossed? Have I grown and not noticed that the others weren't keeping up? Did I move on and suddenly realized I didn't have a place to move on to? Is being single a death sentence with your "so called" friends?

I have no answers yet. And I doubt I will. I do know I have a significant amount of time to find those answers because apparently I'm the only one who calls or invites or sets things up to do. If I don't, then I'm left with nothing and everyone else has moved on and/or planned things that don't seem to include me. Funny how that happened. I stop doing the inviting andall the planning and suddenly they stop being in my life. Yet, I stand firm in my belief that a true friend will meet you half way.

In the end, I see myself clearly. I'm sitting up in a chair an a retirement home and a poor orderly who's been assigned to my room is dabbing drool off my chin. I have no family left, no friends to visit me. Just me and my cat Pookie (who at this point is like 14 THOUSAND years old).

So if you're in the neighborhood, stop by. Say hi. Or god forbid YOU invite me to do something. Until then, I'll be just fine. Ta!