To Be a Friend

I  look around my life, and it is rather empty. Not sure if this is just in my head or my reality. I don't feel close to anyone. I am part of a church, I have acquaintances and I date, but I am not close to anyone. I just don't know how to do this. Growing up without any real attachments has left me struggling to find a way to connected to anyone. So I hibernate in my home, and I take my kids to school and classes. I do yoga a class where I do not have to communicate with anyone, and I walk the track, but no one gets in. I want them in, I want to have friends over for tea, or to hang out with, but I don't, not for lack of asking, they all say yes we would love to but it never happens. Is it me or am I just not normal wondering why? This place where I am now is the place that stops me from working full time, it stops me from having close personal relationships. I don't know how to fix this.  The only relationship I have had until lately have been very dysfunctional, some to the extreme.  I want more than that.  I deserve more than that, but how do I get it?  That is the question.  I do have people on line who I love and care for greatly, and I am sure if we were to meet we would be great friends.  It is in real life I don't feel connected to anyone other than my children, even if the other person feels connected to me, it just feels frail and so precarious, that I sometimes wonder why I bother to even try to have close friends.  I think some times if I had been able to have close friends as a child things might be different now.  But it wasn't like that and I want to fix that part of me.  I want to be a friend and to have friends.