Unsolicited Advice

When I was a kid, I had no friends. There were a couple of other kids whom I was told were my friends. In retrospect, none of them liked me or wanted me around, they were just forced to include me because my mother wanted to gossip with their mother without interruptions. The one whom I was told was my "best friend" didn't like me to the point where she ignored me at school, but she was the kind of kid whose mother picked out her clothes and hairstyle every morning, and she got clocked with a hairbrush if she protested, so clearly she couldn't do much to stop it. The message this sent was that friends were people who would tolerate you when you were there, then roll their eyes and start running you down to others whenever you weren't. So far as I can tell, this is how my mother actually believes friendship works. She consistently behaved this way with all of her friends, back when she had them, and sailed merrily onward with her siblings once my sister and I aged...