fair-weather friends

Since I highly doubt anyone reads these, I have no qualms about taking a post to rant.  I know I am not the perfect friend.  A recent conversation enlightened me to just how far I had let one friendship fall.  Thanks to the other person's bluntness (a refreshing change of pace in the world, I might add), it might not be too late to salvage it.  I have just one nagging issue that has been building up for years.  I have never had a true best friend.

What that ends up meaning, is for years I have always had to be the one to call friends when I want to hang out.  I'm always the one to extend the hand of friendship.  I firmly believe that 80% of my friends only remain that way because I put effort into the relationship.  It has been this way my ENTIRE life.  I really try to be there for people.  I listen when they need it, and I give them advice when they need it, but don't want it.  I care about them, and I let them talk about their lives.  Granted, in the past few years, I have opened up enough that I talk about myself more too.  But the point I'm trying to make, is that in general I try to be a good friend. 

But the sad truth is that no one has ever done the same for me.  I have never had a friend that I could call up anytime I needed anything, to talk about anything, or one who would call me because they knew something was wrong.  It is a rare occasion that someone else calls me to hang out.  If I have a social life, its only because I feel I have to drag my people by their teeth to my house.  It makes me feel a bit like a carpet that I let people walk all over.  But on the other hand, I don't really feel that I have any other choice.

I joke that I must be storing up karma somewhere and that I must have some perfectly incredible husband waiting.  I guess that if I am always there for everyone else, someday someone might be there for me.