As many of you poor and long-suffering people are aware, I’ve been facing many truths about myself in recent years, some good, some awful. Authenticity is a real pain in the ass,  a grind of ups and downs. I’ve been writing about friendship and my sense that it has failed too often in my life.

I wonder if one can ever get there. I had many urgent things to consider as my life disintegrated, and friendship was not something I really looked at throughout my life. I’m considering it now, and realizing that like so many other things in my life,

I think the conventional idea of friendship doesn’t work for me, any more than the conventional idea about bring a grandfather.

I am not really a conventional person, and I need somethings most people don’t need, and don’t need the things most other people do need. People say they feel badly for me when I write about the failed friendships in my life, as if this is piteous,  but I don’t mean to project sadness.

I am actually pretty happy these days, loved, fulfilled and leading a meaningful life. More and more,  I see much of my life as a patchwork and web of grappling with things I don’t need and can’t have.

I’ve made few friends in my lifetime, and kept almost none of them. This isn’t a problem, or a drama, or a crisis. It’s not something to feel bad about, it’s actually quite liberating. It’s just who I am.

My idea of friendship, once I clear away all of the confusion and debris in my curious life is simpler than I thought.

I’ve been writing about what I see as the failure of friendship in my life, but it is coming to me that the real failure is not in the friendship, or in me, but in my idea of what a friend is for me. I actually have many more friends than I think, and they are good ones.

In our culture, we dramatize the idea of friendship, as we dramatize everything else, shaped by the movies and a mindless media.

This is a kind of heroic ideal – the loyal friend who is always there, who rushes to your side, to whom you can say anything, the connection beyond words, the commitment unto death, the long walks and talks in the night. I think men’s ideas about friendship are mostly framed by the myths about combat the Generals and old men who start wars create so they can get young men to die for one another, and for their cause.

All kinds of people live and die for the good of others, but the only ones we really glorify and thank and honor are the ones who die in war. I respect the sacrifice of soldiers, for sure, but for me, this idea of male friendship is flawed and troubling.

I know a social worker who altered and saved the lives of scores of people over many years, it was thankless and grueling work, and it paid little more than the minimum wage. When she died, nobody lamented her on cable news, and no one but her only daughter and uncle came to her funeral. I know an aging priest who devoted his life to caring for the poor.

No one outside of his parish ever heard of  him, he died alone in a Church retirement home.

No one ever invited  his or her family to sit in the gallery at the State Of The Union address. Nobody came up to either of them on the street and thanked them for their service.

My ideas on friendship, now that i am open to thinking about it, are evolving, becoming clearer. And it is a radical change for me. There are good reasons why friendship has been complex for me, and the biggest is that I didn’t know who I was and what I needed.

When friendships fail, it is nobody’s fault, it suggests to me that they were not real to begin with. Duh.

We are all looking for what we need, and what each of us needs is different from what anyone else needs.

There isn’t only one way to have a friend, any more than there is one way to get a dog, or one way to look at politics. And I’m not telling anyone else what to do.

How interesting to finally see what i don’t want.

I don’t want what I call a “Grandma” friend, a friend who only comes around in crisis. When I am in crisis, i don’t really want anybody to come around, I want to fix it myself, those are the only cures that stick. (I don’t care for “Grandma” e-mail either.)

I don’t want a friend who sees me as a toilet bowl, a place to deposit all of their misery and travail. And I’ve shed the habit of reaching out for saviors, and awaiting rescue from others. In trouble, my very best friend is me

I want a friend I can ask for help if I need it, and who will come when I need it. And otherwise support me in caring for myself, in being independent and keeping my dignity in a fragmented and corporatized world.

Otherwise, I embrace a new cardinal rule in my life: people have to save themselves, I can’t save them, and they can’t save me. Nor do I want them to. And no one did, when it hit the fan. I saved me, and that is the way it should be, if at all possible.

One of the best things I have learned about the turmoil of my life is to take responsibility for it.

This is the life I choose, and I have no right to lament it or complain about it or turn life’s twists and turns into a drama. I chose to life on a farm, surrender my resources in a long divorce proceeding, declare bankruptcy when I was overwhelmed by the Great Recession, love and marry Maria, move to our new and quite wonderful and simple home, commit myself to getting help that helped.

That means I will never be rich, never think of retiring, never have the money in the bank I have been told people like me ought to have. That’s the deal, I made, that’s the contract, I accept it. It does not shock or enrage me. If you love dogs, some will die on you, that’s the deal.

For most of my life, I lived the life of the book writer, and when that life changed, I have explored and found ways to continue writing and pay my bills and lately, focus on committing small acts of kindness for vulnerable people. That has grounded me in a way few things have, for reasons that are not quite clear.

None of these good things really have to do with friendships and friends, unless I define them more broadly. I have come to see everyone in the Army of Good as a cherished friend, and I will never even get to meet or see the vast majority of them. That has been a revelation for me.

Look what friends can accomplish together, even if they’ve never met.

I know I need love in my life, and Maria is the best friend I have ever had or hope to have.

So I am learning what it is that I need, not what I have been taught or told to want.

. And I think what I need is to make a new kind of friend, to define friendship in different ways. And I am. i am letting go of this old and tired – and for me, failed – idea of what friendship is.

My friends now are mostly, but not all, strong women, who seem to be to be more open emotionally, gentler and more accepting.  They are available, but never invasive or intrusive.

They love to laugh, and see the irony of our lives. And they can laugh at themselves.

These friends seem to possess the gift of empathy, they value friendship and make time for it in their lives. They understand that sometimes, friendship is about what we don’t do as well as what we do do. Am I romanticizing women? Perhaps. But I see i all the time. And I rarely see it in men, who are so often troubled and broken.

These friends have a strong sense of boundaries, as strong women often need to have.

They seek to achieve, but not dominate. If there are problems, we simply talk about them. They listen to me, rather than presume what it is that I want or know. It is not news and no secret that women, in general, are more emotionally evolved and open than most men.

I think I am coming to understand that most men cannot really be the kind of friend I want or need to have.  And that I really don’t need a lot of “close” friends in the conventional sense.

This is, I am sure, my doing as much as theirs. But that is who I am, and I happy to be seeing it. It feels lighter.

There is a simplicity about the friendships I need. And in truth, I need fewer things from friends than I always thought I did or was looking for. Perhaps that was why I had so much trouble finding friends. I need friends, of course, like everyone else,  but I am letting go of the notion that they are central to my life.

I know many people, see many people, our lives are not isolated in any way. We have a community of people around us,   they are our friends. They are friends.

I lived for many years in drama, and I know how dangerous and unhealthy it is. I don’t want it in my life, any more than is absolutely necessary. I believe in friendships that are nourishing, but not consuming. I  want my friendships to come out of connection, not struggle.

I can’t define a friend any further than that. I think you know a friend when you find one, and you know when you haven’t. I’m getting it.