Luna Lovegood

My new friend doesn't like me anymore.

That or she's very busy, her phone fell in the toilet and she can't get her messages, or there was some kind of terrible emergency.

We went to the beach and she had a little party to introduce me to her friends. She and I stayed up talking until 4 am and it seemed we would never run out of things to say.

But then, just before I went home for a week, I said to her, "Thanks for sharing your friends and being so nice to me." That was the fatal error. When I said that I felt like Luna Lovegood -- the crazy socially-inept character in the Harry Potter books who always says things like, "Thanks for letting me hang out with you. No one else wants to spend time with me. They all think I'm weird or smelly."

In case of an unequal power balance in a friendship, neither should acknowledge it. If the one with all the resources (friends, connections, a big tv, etc.) knows the other is lacking, that's fine. But if one says, "here, borrow my friends" or the other says, "I don't have anything else to do besides hang out with you" it's all over.

Actually I think the real problem is that I have far too much time to analyze the few human interactions I have outside of work.

I need to find somewhere to fit in. I'm looking for somewhere to volunteer. And I'm going to go to church and the bar to do stories while hopefully also making some friends.