"I'm happy, I have 'sort of' friends at last!"

... said Ben yesterday. To which I responded: "They're not 'sort of' friends, they're real friends." To which he replied: "Well they're not the kind of friends you can talk about old times with, because I haven't known them that long." "But that doesn't stop them from being real friends," I said. "At some point, your original friends were new friends and you had no common history to be nostalgic about."


As you may know, ever since the eating disorder arrived in the summer of 2009, Ben cut himself off socially. Gradually his old friendship group drifted away (which I have always felt a deep anger about because I feel they should have 'tried harder'), and Ben was left friendless.

For a long time.

And, not surprisingly, it got him down.

It's only fairly recently that he has begun to establish a brand new friendship group: people he's met through his favourite hobby, Warhammer. Nowadays he meets up with them fairly regularly. And, when he does, he always returns home happy.

Hopefully he will keep this group of friends when he goes to university, especially if he's planning to come home at weekends.

And, also hopefully, he will make similar new friends at university, perhaps through the Warhammer society at the university.

And, in my opinion, these are already 'real' friends, not 'sort of' friends.

It's all Good News for Ben!