I think the truthful answer for me is no, not yet, perhaps never.

“Don’t walk in front of me,” wrote Albert Camus, “I may not follow. Don’t walk behind me, I may not lead. Walk beside me….Just be my friend.”

I keep looking for friendship, it has always been important to me,  but few things have caused me more pain and confusion than my inability to keep close friendships or trust the friends I have, or see them clearly.

Looking back on my lengthening life, which I rarely do, this struggle over friendship stands out as one of the enduring difficulties and failures of my life.

I think sometimes of the rich gallery of once close friends I never see, speak to, or hear from. Casualties,  really, lost memories. Their faces sometimes flash through my mind during the dead of night, ghosts wagging their finger at me in disappointment and scorn.

There is lots of research to suggest that people who have parents who emotionally or physically abused or neglected them are much more likely to have enduring troubles with relationships, they often seem frightening and threatening.

They learn to keep their distance.

I understand that is my story and the story of so many other people. But that does not really help.

I am close to absolutely no one that I have known for more than a few years. I have a long history of forming close friends and then seeing the friendships blow up for one reason or another, often to my amazement.

I am uneasy when people get close to me, I invest my friendships with too much emotion, and they almost inevitably and predictably blow up or crumble, usually to my great surprise.

I once was blind, and still cannot really see.

I have worked hard on this and thought I was safe from it, but I lost another good friend recently and it really stunned me.

It was a stab to the heart, it ended angrily and with cruelty and it was a deep and familiar hurt.

I was so  unprepared for it, and it so hurt all the more. Enough is enough, I thought. Something is wrong with me.

Sometimes I run away from my friends, sometimes they run away from me.

I tend to think the problem is mine.

I do, after all, suffer from mental illness.  I know I am flawed, but the doctors say unhealthy relationships are almost always a two-way street. The answer, then, must be to find healthy ones. Not so easy.

I was in one form of therapy or another for more than 30 years – I stopped several years ago – and I was told again and again that as an abused and assaulted child, I had deep and somewhat inevitable intimacy issues.

They would, the therapists said, be very difficult, if not impossible,  to overcome.

Getting close to people, the shrinks told me, would be a challenge.

Nobody gets too close, or stays there too long. Maria is the first person in my life to change that story. Our relationship began as a friendship and has deepened – we are lovers and partners as well.

She has restored my faith in trust. Self loathing is not a form of humility, it is a form of self-abuse.

The truth is, I have made some progress in making friends, but I have given up on the idea that I can or should form close relationships that are mutual, nourishing and long-lasting. I’m not sure they even exist, and if they do exist, I’m not sure I could manage one.

How can I learn not to wait for the explosion?

I’d be happy to be proven wrong, but I am getting older and am more and more inclined to simply live out my happy life and accept who I am and how I am. We can’t all be good at everything, we can’t have everything we want.

I am lucky, I have many things I want, more than I ever imagined.

I don’t really trust myself to have close friends, and it follows that I’m not sure I trust friends either.

In addition to Dyslexia and some other disorders, I have suffered greatly in my life from what the therapists call Co-Dependence.

Co-Dependence is a pattern of behavior in which people find themselves dependent on approval or some other person for self-worth and identity.

It can take the form of giving too much or taking too much. One key sign is when one’s sense of purpose in life is wrapped around making extreme sacrifices to satisfy a friend or partner’s needs.

Or trying too hard to meet someone else’s needs.

Or giving a way too many pieces of yourself. At the core of co-dependence is low self-esteem and identity, the symbols of a battered ego.

I could not bear to relate the trouble this has caused in my life, the money spent, the emotions drained, the disruptions to my life and the life of others.

My life is a good place now, I have come a long way, and I do no harm, and am deeply aware of my problems,  but those scars will never leave me.

I’ve sometimes had a Jesus complex in which I throw myself into the saving of other people. To some extent, this can be a healthy and wonderful trait, if it is bounded and considered.

In another sense, it can be just another form of mental illness, the loss of perspective that puts oneself in danger for the sake of feeling  worthwhile.

I never see this friendship thing coming until it rears up and bites me on the ass.

Maria is my miracle. We have overcome so much together, our love is deeper and stronger than ever.

She has also suffered from co-dependence, and she permits few people to get very close to her. We are both extremely aware of co-dependence and keep it out of our own  relationship, which is about building identity and self-esteem, not taking it away.

We each have our own lives, our own identity, our own sense of self, even if other people often thing of us as one single entity, even though we are quite different, and do very different things.

For me, it comes down to trust. Can I ever trust friendships again, having failed so painfully and miserably to sustain them for so long? Should I? I am a serial failure at friendship, and yet I have a full and happy life?

Why not accept it and move on.

Henri Nouwen, the spiritual author, preaches trust. “Trust that those who love you want to show you their love in a real way, even when their choices of time, place and form are different from  yours.”

I think I understand that  you get what you give, and if you are not open to receiving the love of a friend, you will not be able to give real love in return.

He also, bless him, warns against self-abuse and blame.

When a friendship does not blossom, when a word is not received, he says, when a gesture of love is not appreciated, don’t blame it on yourself.

“Every time you reject yourself,” he writes, “you idealize others. You want to be with those whom you consider better, stronger, more intelligent, more gifted than  yourself. Thus you make yourself emotionally dependent, leading others to feel unable to fulfill  your expectations and causing them to withdraw from you.”

My idea is to claim what gifts are unique to me and look within myself for friendship and trust, to live as an equal among equals.

My idealized idea of friendship is not something I need any longer, or am even seeking.

My wish is to set myself free from my obsessive and possessive needs, to give and  receive true and honest affection, and yes, friendship.

I no longer think it is likely to happen, although I am good at change. I am always open to being wrong.