Somebody asked me the other day if real friends actually exist. I sat there for a second because the honest answer is I dont know. I mean I know they exist for other people. I see it. People with guys they've known since third grade, people who show up with a six pack when your car breaks down. But do I know it for myself. Thats a whole different question.

Here's the thing about being my friend. Its a lot of work and most of it aint even your fault. My first memory is my biological mother walking away from me. Two years old. Thats the first thing my brain ever recorded as a fact about the world. People leave. And not because you did something, just because they can. That dont wash off. I dont care how many years of therapy or how many self help books you stack up. That sits in you like a rock in your shoe. You learn to walk different so you dont feel it but its still there.

So now somebody comes up to me and says hey man lets be friends. And my brain dont hear that as a good thing. My brain hears a warning siren. What are your intentions. Why do you want to be my friend. What's the catch. Because in my experience nobody just does something for nothing. There's always a thing underneath the thing. And I know how that sounds. I know it sounds paranoid and cold and like I'm the problem. But I've been burned enough that my instinct is literally to run. Block the number. Delete the message. Get out in front of it before they can do it to me first. That way it was my idea. That way I win. Except you dont win nothing doing that. You just sit in a quiet house with your dogs and tell yourself you're safer this way.

And thats the battle. Every single time. Somebody's nice to me and I have this fight in my head that dont ever end. One part of me wants to let them in. The other part is already packing my bags and looking for the exit before they get a chance to leave first. Its exhausting. Being around people already drains me, thats just how I'm wired, I get overloaded quick and I need quiet to come back down. Now add the trust thing on top of that and you got a guy who will go dark on you for a week and you'll think he hates you. He dont hate you. He's in his own head doing math about whether you're safe.

So what is a real friend anyway. I used to think it was somebody who says the right stuff. Then I got older and figured out its not the words. Words are cheap and people are real good at them. A real friend is somebody who stays when you go quiet. Somebody who dont take your weirdness personal. Somebody who sees you in a real bad season and dont make it about them. Heres the test I use now. If somebody knows I'm rough, and they still check in a month later without needing me to explain myself, they pass. Simple as that. Very few pass. Thats not a complaint, thats just the results.

My husband Anthony passed that test a long time ago and he keeps passing it. My dogs pass it every day without even trying, which is why I've always liked animals better than people. A dog dont have an agenda. A dog dont want nothing from you but food and your hand on his back. Blanca knows my moods better than most humans I've met. She dont ask me what's wrong. She just lays her head on my leg when its a bad one and that's the whole conversation. Thats more friendship than I got from a lot of folks who could talk.

Now here's the part that scares me. I do this to good people too. I block before I look. I assume the worst and I'm usually wrong, I just never stick around long enough to find out. And the thought that keeps me up at night is that this is how I'm going to be for the rest of my life. An old man who ran everybody off before they had a chance. Thats a real fear. Not a metaphor. Thats a thing I think about.

I aint got a neat ending for this because I dont have one. I'm still fighting it. But if you're one of them people who tried to be my friend and I went cold on you, you know a little more now. It wasnt about you. It was a rock in my shoe and I'm still learning how to walk with it.

So guess I'm asking. If you got somebody like me in your life, the one who goes quiet and swears they dont need anybody. Do you keep checking in. Or did you quit.