Art of making friends for a lifetime

Vivek once said to me "The only people you can choose in this lifetime are friends. So make as many as you can and cherish it. Relatives are given by HIM and you got to accept them whether you like it or not." How true. It takes time and effort to make and retain friends. I see it with the few people i know.

Am a highly sensitive person with a caution to everything in life. The red alert antenna in my brain starts blinking at the drop of a hat. Am opening up more now, have started talking freely to people. Its definitely going to take sometime. Unwinding 23 years of lifestyle is not all that easy. Have been brought up this way by my family and circumstances.

Pravin and I are stark opposites, he never had to go through what i had to as a kid. He never had to stay at a relative's place during schooling. I was barely 7 years old when i studied at my granny's. No doubt they are good people. But small incidents can leave a permanent scar in a kids mind. Abusing the kids parents, talking about their financial status and asking the helpless kid why didn't your dad tell me before he left that we got to pay for your tuition this month, makes one more reserved. Having grown in such environments i started being so careful about money, that i couldn't kick the habit when i started living with my own parents. Never asked them to buy me anything, never asked them for a help. Grew up with a feeling that it is obligation to ask parents for help. But i did get the courage to ask for something big in life, fought for it and got it.
Till this day, i don't ask them if they can help me out in anyway, if they understand my needs and offer i have learnt not to say a no.
Talking to strangers, especially boys, was considered a stigma. Branded a flirt because i said "hi" to one of my cousin's friendds at home :(

Its a commom perception that people from down south in India let money rule their lives. Maybe its true, maybe its not. In my case it didn't have anything to do with my origin, its just what i was subjected to. If one had to think twice before asking for a 100 page notebook that costed Rs.5 back in 1993, then its not all that easy to change it.
It definitely hurts a lot when my own call me a miser.

Am glad am opening up. I want to be a good friend and help my friends in whatever way i can. That will help me come out of the very small world i have lived all these years.