super heroes

A former friend once remarked to me, and as I reflect on the exchange, I am wondering if he had just heard someone else say this, that people's network of friends were like a network of superheroes, that each friend represented a kind of super power and added together provided what a person needed.

I liked the concept. And I am quite sure I'd like to have a super power or two and a network of friends with their own super powers.

This guy, who I no longer am in relationship with (he ghosted me after treating me poorly for years, after I endured him treating me poorly for years. . . . ). As he put it in one of our last face to face visits, he said "we were never friends, we are just two people who met at a conference."  Yikes. He said this nearly 8 years after he had socialized with me. Who socializes with someone for that long if they don't see the other person as a friend. Those words cut me painfully. In hindsight, I think he was doing he shithead best to sever ties with me when he said that.

I have had years to reflect on this guy, to review many of our long-ago-now interactions. I think he is dishonest across the board, a sneaky, sniveling, fearful little man who projects his insecurities onto women and blames them for whatever he is feeling and experiencing. Fuck him. Yeah, fuck him.

I like the idea of one's friends as a team of super heroes, each providing a super power I need.

I need these superpowers, but not necessarily only these. I am just popping off the top of my head. I need love. I need a magic touch that generates a lot more money into my life. I need a committed male lover who wants to be with me and who can't get enough time with me -- is that a super power or does this fall under the power of love?  I want a happy sex life.  I want my daughter to love me:  a specilalized superpower of daughter-mother respect and love:  I need this one most of all.

I need hope as a super power.

I need tenderness as a super power.

I need lots of time in nature.

I need a car (not a super power but geez, I want a car so I can leave Berkeley and venture into the beautiful land I live in. And I want to take road trips again. Right now, I'm jonesing for a road trip to Chicago, then swing by Minneapolis. Are these super powers?

The power to blink and produce what I want might get me a lot of the things I have listed. Or a magic lantern. Or my own genie. Or my own magic power.

That's what I need:  magic.