Other people help keep your perspective

Does this ever happen to you? You live alone. It's 4 in the morning. You wake up and start worrying about something. At times like that, I find it hard to keep things in perspective. There are times when I'm obssessing about some issue, and then later when I mention it to a friend, that person looks at it in a completely different way. It can feel like such a relief to see another viewpoint.

I remember several years ago when my life was more complicated. I owned and lived in an older home--a rental property--that required constant repairs and maintenance. Plus I had another rental property in another part of town. Being a single mom at the time and working full time, it was a continual hassle to find people who would look at the things that needed to be done, give me a fair estimate, and agree to set an appointment to do the work. Because of course, most of the time the repairs were too small to be of interest to a lot of repairpersons. So they'd agree to come and look (for which I had to find time for an appointment and often have to arrange to stay home from work for it), after which they'd simply never respond to my phone calls because there wasn't enough money in it for them. Then I'd have to start the whole process over again.

Well, anyway, I'd go to my 6 a.m. aerobics class where I would see several women friends (all married). And I would describe my woes to them. One day one of them said to me, oh, you've always got some drama going on! I was taken aback.

Went home and thought about what she'd said. Next day when I saw them all again I said, hey, you know, you guys have your significant others to talk to about things. In my case, you ARE my significant others--so I naturally want to bounce everything off you guys.

Friends are treasures anyway, but when you live alone, they're like gold.