Dear Russ:

Hope you have a good skiing experience this weekend, or that you already had one by the time you read this.

The title of your thread: “Friends- never had, never will?”-

Interesting, because the way you communicated on your thread with everyone who responded to you, has been filled with empathy, appreciation, grace, gratitude, so very friendly and indeed your thread has been successful in drawing more respondents than other threads and it has drawn the same respondents to reply multiple times.

If this is how you operated in life outside this thread, you would have Friends- lots of them (instead of the title of your current thread).

And that makes me think: what is happening here? Our previous discussion about being a fraud comes to mind. In one of the earliest posts here you wrote: “The only thing that concerns me about peeling off the ‘fraud’ is that I have always been told to be positive and upbeat around everyone and never show that I am in pain or struggling. That pain or struggling has turned many people away”.

What happens, Russ, if you peel off, in your next post (addressed to me, perhaps, since I am suggesting it), if you peel off this gracious, super friendly, very accommodating, positive, upbeat person that you presented here so far, and present a person “in pain or struggling”- maybe a hurt and angry person?

You are welcome to do so, if you’d like.

anita