I look back at my life after 50 years, and I am still frustrated in the present by the same thing that has been true pretty much all along: I have no friends. And what is a friend? Someone in my building I can chatter with briefly? Someone on a website who I chat with who is on my friends list? Someone I sit with in a classroom frequently, or who will chat with me on the train on the way home? I appreciate having all of these social acquaintances, I really do, but that is not what I consider a friend. I've even had work acquaintances that I've done related recreational or professional things with. I treasure those. I make effort to keep in touch, but no one makes the effort back. They might respond on rare occasion, but I can see I'm not needed. I'm extra.

A friend is what I hear other people talking about - someone who is there for you, like in the old Carly Simon song, "You've got a friend." That one always brings tears, like when I remembered it this morning. A friend is someone you are close to, who is interested in how you're doing and what you're doing, who is comfortable with you. A friend is valued, and all these characteristics are mutual. Maybe you get what I mean so I don't have to go on and on.

My husband is a true friend (though of course marriage has challenges) and he feels like my only true friend ever. It's not healthy to have only one person in your life. For either of us. But he is not interested in friends and suspicious of them, because he has always been hurt and used by them in his past.

I had two neighbourhood friends, when I was a small child. At puberty we parted ways, partly because I left the neighbourhood and partly because I no longer had anything in common with them. They became teenage girls who do all the things you expect them to, and I could not go there. I became more of an outcast than ever, it seemed. I became invisible. I never had a single friend in all of my school career, be it kindergarten through graduating university.

I struggled with all people things, not getting social stuff unless I got the concepts from a book and then tried them out. Zero intuition or understanding of feeling. I can see why no one liked me, since I'm not normal. But this morning I was remembering how I worked closely with a group of teaching colleagues for almost a decade. Always the outsider. Except when a shop steward was needed. Then I was very successful, but still no friends in the sense of closeness and connection. Just professional stuff. For teaching, I had to learn the human interaction part from a book. For me, teaching was about a circus of minds. I learnt the social forms, but that's not the plane I exist on. It's a very artificial layer for me. I value my situational friends, but I want more.

I can be so stupid about people.

I'm posting this hoping for some understanding, and a chance to learn from other people's experiences. Any thoughts that come to your mind?