3 is the loneliest number

Three.

Three often means two plus one.

I have two friends I met my first year of "junior high" for lack of a better word, when I was ten. We remained in the same class until I was 15, and then they both went towards economics and then prepared the entrance exam for business school, and I went towards literature.

French school system.

I was not a very gregarious child, and had very few friends. My dream, from the age of 10 onwards, was to be someone's best friend. In that internet-less age, best friends called each other every evening on the house phone, and annoyed their parents expecting calls. Best friends had sleep-overs. Best friends could bond against the world.

This never really happened for me. Like the booty call who hopes against all odds that he/she will become the official partner, I spend a lot of time daydreaming about my potential best friend-making moves. Should I be funnier? Should I have cuter clothes?

When I finally got close friends, it never felt that I was the one. My two closest friends and I formed a trio, an uncomfortable one at times. I will never forget a trip to Vienna where I felt completely left out and cried myself to sleep every night. I was a very immature 17.

I don't know why the moniker best friend was so important to me. Now I have many friends, all important for me, all wonderful, and I laugh at my past self for having set so much store on a label. How insecure. How silly. No one can be everything to someone.

Now my two oldest friends are going back to school together. Like when we were 15, they will be laughing about teachers, sharing in-jokes about fellow students, spending hours in the same classroom. I suddenly realised this a few days ago and thought "How nice for them."
Then I thought "Damn it. 2+ 1 AGAIN?"

And I call myself an adult.

Jealous

I come from jealous stock. Some people in my family, most notably my mother, are intensely jealous. It's not an emotion I feel very often. As a child, I was jealous of the attention my sister got, like many children, I suppose. As a teenager, I felt jealous of people who had friends. Now I sometimes feel a twinge of envy when people go on awesome vacations. But it's not much to write home about.

Both of my ex-boyfriends were/still are flirtatious, attractive men who were surrounded by women a lot of the time. Some of whom were trying to go out with them. This never made me particularly jealous. And then X actually did more than flirting with one of his groupies.

And I felt so jealous. I suddenly realized what jealous meant. And I hated it!

Jealousy is one of the most pointless emotions I can think of. It brings you nothing but pain. Sometimes I remember in a flash of horror just how bad I felt. How eaten up. How wrecked.

And you never know when it may come again.