"Ya Gotta Have Friends..."

     Well, here goes-my second post in the same number of days lol.  I will have to make this one short, though.  I have someplace to go today, and I don't have much time. 
     Yesterday's post was negative.  Today's is positive.  I was reminded once again this week that even if I don't have romantic love, I do have friends who love and care for me dearly.  Out of the blue, someone I don't hear from very often at all, called me up and asked to get together to work on a project that she has wanted to do for a long time.   She hasn't had the opportunity before now because of her many comittments elsewhere.  I jumped at the chance, and she, Katie and I spent most of the day together.  We ended up going to the library, Wal-Mart, and then visiting with an elderly lady she has adopted as a kind of surrogate "Mama."   Lots of conflicting emotions there.  I was so glad that my friend could be there for this woman.  She really has no one else, and it touched my heart to see her gratitude for the affection and attention.  It BROKE my heart to see her cry when faced with us leaving though.  She would have loved for us to just stay with her indefinitely.
     Having lived with a man who treats me like dirt under his shoe and before that, having grown up an only child in a house where everything revolved around my narcississtic father, I can somewhat understand what she feels, and it is my greatest fear for the future.  Even as a teen, I can remember listening to The Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby" and hearing lines like "Eleanor Rigby died in the church and was buried alone with her name-nobody came" and thinking "someday that will be me."   I can easily visualize myself as an old woman alone with a bunch of cats, dying and no one even discovering it until days later.  The episode in which Miranda envisions this same scenario in "Sex and the City" resonated with me too. 
     But then, I have begun to believe that you are only alone if you choose to be.  Most of the people who end up like this did things when they were younger that ended up driving people away from them, made those close to them not WANT to be around them, or they withdrew from the world on their own LONG before it ever gave up on THEM.  There is a lesson there.  I do that a lot even now.  I am very self-sufficient, and to a large extent I have a hard time trusting people and letting them get close to me, so I really need to make an effort or my fear could become a self-fullfilling prophecy.
     I am determined that I won't let it-and having more days like I had with my friend (we never even got to the work we intended to do lol)is part of it. 
     Okay-the post wasn't ALL negative.  See-there's that dichotomy of personality again.