Pose, I know exactly what you mean. Some people goes through their life with open hands always awaiting that someone is willing to help them. They are so familiar with this manner that they don't see any other way. They also could need your help but in another form. To refuse help is sometimes the only way to be a real helping hand!
But unfortunality in the most cases you will figure it out after you've been hurt by your so called 'friend'...

To be careful is not the worst thing because you'll need your life energy for your own and for your real friends. And, maybe the man for whom you have stopped giving help had learnt to help himself in the meantime and is now on his way to get also a real friend of yours. Okay, mostly they're not but don't give up the believing because sometimes they really are...

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Greetings from Frankfurt (Germany),
Sheriff ;-)

This has been on my mind lately...

In the past few months that I have been hanging around a certain bar (and need to quit), I have had several guys say to me "Your daddy was a good man" when the conversation would bring him up for whatever reason. I've heard that countless times over my life. I'm now trying to write that into a song. The theme being that if people say that about me (what they said about my dad) after I'm gone, then I will leave earth having succeeded.

What's interesting is that some of these people, I don't even know how they interacted with my dad. We lived in the same town but I was not aware of them knowing him very well.

I make friends easily. No problem. Wherever I am. That's good. My brother is the opposite. Actually, to be honest, I don't think he has any good friends. Sad.

Your life takes all kinds of twists and turns. Good friends come and go. Your closest friends, those are very few.

It's also sad that a close friendship can sour just a bit because one of you grows in some way and the other doesn't. The friendship will always be there but you aren't as close anymore because of the different ways of looking at things.

I wrote a song called "Graduation Day." Graduation Day is nearing. Appropos also. It's about how you can go through school and know classmates your entire life until Graduation Day and then Poof! They're gone. You don't realize it at the time. You're too young and naive to realize that "once you move that tassle, that whole part of life is gone." And some of them, you will never see again. Ever. That's kind of sad.