Pondering Friendship

I've been absorbing the events of the last post, and I've come to settle on pondering my perspective of friendship.
I've never really had a lot of "friends". I have a lot of acquaintances, but not a whole bunch of what I would consider real friends. The friends I do have are loyal, reliable, and true blue.
See, when I decide to call someone my friend, and actually mean it in that sense, there is nothing I wouldn't do for them. I'd give them my last dollar and the shirt off my back, and have on occasion. When I decide to devote myself so much to one person who isn't my spouse, I expect that much in return. It sounds like a lot, but really what I'm demanding is that they be capable of listening, and to turn out to be worthy of the trust that I put in them.
I am an open book. As if you couldn't already tell that by the posts that you find here. ;o) It's true though, that there is a certain amount that I hold back from my blog. Surprising as that may seem, I choose to keep a part of me from everyone in the world.
At heart, I'm a honest, kind, generous, a perfectionist, and sometimes insecure person. I don't mind my insecurities, they remind me I'm human. All that being said, it took a lot for me to get where I am today.
In the years following the Scene with my stepfather, I ran through loads of people I was trying on as friends. Street people, homeless people, drug addicts, high school drop outs, straight A students, adults, kids my age, teens, boys, girls. I was spontaneous in who I chose to talk to because I had chosen to ignore the intuition that told me when someone wasn't worth my time (which I've always had, BTW). That got me in to trouble, and also led the downfall (even more so) of my ability to trust and have faith in those around me.
There were a lot of situations where my trust was betrayed. Trust that a secret I told someone was going to be kept, that I thought I would be safe if I stuck close to someone, that I could hang out with people who liked me, that I could leave my personal possessions with someone for a minute while step away and know it wasn't going to go missing. Those times I was proven wrong.
I know better these days, and am extremely wary of who I place my trust in. I know when a business person I'm involved with is going to screw me over, I know when a person my Mr is chatting with (through some new organization here or there) is going to take advantage of us, I know when I should just not talk to someone simply by the way they look at me.
That all being said, it's extremely difficult for me to make friends, and the ones I do make are for life. Those people make up a small core around me, and I know I can call them at any time of day or night if I need help. Seriously, only a small handful of people have ever met these standards.
I've often moped and moaned over why people don't meet my standards for friendship, and yes, even shed a tear or two...maybe out of frustration, maybe out of self pity, who knows. It's hard to go through life without a wide base of supports, especially when you're as expectant as I am.
There have been many times where I've wondered how some other people can be so lucky as to have a full address book of friends, a party that's always happening, and never be left alone on a Friday night unless they choose to be. I envy those kind of people. I'm also baffled by this ability.
So, this whole situation I find myself surviving right now leaves me wondering, if I work hard enough, can I gain the skills to be like this, or will I make the conscious choice to remain as reserved as I am now. It should be interesting to make the comparison in any event.

Remind me to blog about surviving.