On best friends and longing to be known

The other day I was signing up for my Direct TV online account. You know that online thing that keeps me from having to speak to any live person in relation to the massive amounts of money I will pay them, for the thrill of collapsing into a TV coma during any free time I may have. (Holy run on sentence batman!)
I had to pick a security question, and there was a whole drop down list of which to choose from. One of them was, "What is the last name of your best friend?" I immediately thought of Jake's post.

I don't answer best friend questions, because a) someone got super pissed at me once because their name was left off the list and we didn't speak for almost a year. It almost broke my heart. b) the truth I hold in my heart about who it is can be painful to admit.
But mine, like Jake's is someone far away, someone I am speaking to less and less these years past. Yet their name is on my lips every morning when I wake. I often think that it is their memory, clouded and muddled, that I hold as my best friend, my comforter.
I don't know what the solution to that is, to turn and face a future that terrifies me. A future that leaves me trusting people with a bruised and battered heart.
It's remarkably easy for me to tell salacious things about my life, my history in casual conversation.
Yet it is almost impossible for me to say the truth. To speak out that while sitting in the middle of a crowded room with friends I love, that while laughing and carrying on, I still feel...below the surface and way down deep a dull ache of loneliness because I can't find my best friend.