The concreteness of getting married brought upon a fact that I wasn't really aware of which hit me like a sack of dead babies the other week.

I have no friends.

Don't get me wrong, I have plenty of "acquaintances" but no "real friends". For some reason, all I have in my life are part-time friends. Maybe it was because I didn't want to find a replacement BFF after Stoner Dave left town. Maybe it was because I've never really had a real BFF in my life for as long as I can remember other than a handful of people who are now nowhere to be found.

It really is a shame and is seriously bringing me down when I start to think about it. No bachelor party, no best man to pick. No buddy to take me out drinking after I have a bad day at work.

So, when kate and I started getting fairly serious in our relationship, we agreed that we would start to make more of an effort to branch out and make new friends and to be more social. My prior relationship taught me one thing and that is to definitely not keep your mate as your only friend as when it goes to shit, and it often does, you are left high and dry all by yourself. Now I'm not saying Kate and I are parting ways (ever!) and I also will go down on record by saying that she is my best friend but a guy (and a girl) needs more than their significant other in their lives to be healthy.

Before dating kate I had a group of fairly close car friends who I spent close to every waking minute with. We were all different but the one thing that created the common bond were cars. I thought that was all I needed in life and many times defended them to my death in arguments with other people, namely my parents or other differing people in the scene who had disagreements with members in the crew.

Time passed and I grew up as did many of the people in the crew. People got married, had kids and other things mature people do. Other's stayed the same and didn't really advance. With each passing summer, the experiences became more tame, stories became more watered down. Friendships never really died, but as we grew older, we understood that our lives were becoming more complex and we needed more than what some of these people could provide.

The other day I realized that either I had worn out my welcome with the group or I simply just wasn't such a key member as I thought I was within the social circle. It wasn't a specific event that made it clear to me albeit a culmination of people showing their true colors which made me decide I didn't belong with these folks anymore. Real friends don't attack you. Real friends don't talk shit. Real friends give you the benefit of the doubt. The hardest part about it is that I really do like a few cats in the group but it's somewhat hard to get them apart from the roving group of assholes they socialize with. The bigger issue is that I will be seeing all of these people on a constant basis during the show season.

If you had to ask yourself, if you REALLY needed someone, how many people could you really count on to be there for you? Like, 4am, you needed 2 grand that night or you needed to go pound some sense into someone and needed help; how many people could you really count on?

Those are the kinds of people I consider friends and after this week, I can count on 2-3 people on a good day and that hurts. A lot. So my new resolution is to start going out and actually make an effort to find such friends as it's always good to know people who have 2 grand laying around at 4am *winks*.

It pisses me off that I let this get to me but it does and it's left me ruined for the past 48 hours. I have my appointment tomorrow and I'm nervous btw. Is it sad that I can't wait to be put on some sort of medication or something? I don't want to keep taking this anymore the way it is.