Have you ever had a friendship where it felt as though you were the only friend within it? I think we all will, if we haven't already. I find that when I invest myself in people, I really try to give them my all, even when they may not deserve it. I try my best to be inclusive because I'm all too familiar with the pain of feeling excluded, or feeling unwanted. I always lend a listening ear, because I want my friends to feel both heard and understood, because I know what it's like to feel like you have no one else to turn to.

I'm a strong believer that we should be the type of person or friend that you yourself would want. I want to be reliable, trustworthy, and stable for my friends because those are all the qualities I look for in a friend.

I have the most amazing friends now, and let me tell you that I am truly blessed with the best, but it wasn't always as easy as I have it now.

I've had a lot of hard losses, and a lot of tough conversations and horrific experiences to weed out the negative people in my life.

I've gotten hurt by a few, and felt the pain of being stabbed in the back one too many times for my liking.

However, I think that these experiences made me more conscious of not only the kind of friend I want to be, but also the kind of person I choose to be.

I've ended friendships because of distance, or just because we grew apart. That's normal and healthy, you're not going to stay friends with every single person you meet. However, it hurts when you lose a friendship that didn't even have to be lost.

This one friendship I had lost was over a boy, and this one hurt the most. Because I really cherished our unlikely friendship, and I loved how effortless it was. Except when you added a boy you both liked (and had history with) into the mix, we just couldn't work it out and so we had to cut our ties. We still wish each other the best, but you can't help but feel the awkwardness of what "was" our friendship.

And then we have the one that I didn't even really realize went south until it blew up in my face and in my heart.

In this one, we claimed to be best friends. Until I realized they only turned to me when things went to crap for them, and they needed me to build them back up and inflate their ego. It took me a really long time to realize that we were never best friends at all, and at times, I questioned if we were ever even friends to begin with. I trusted this person and expected nothing but the truth and honesty from them, and when it came down to it, they lied to me. Every. Single. Time.

What I'm getting at here is that with every friendship that is lost there is a more valuable lesson to be learned. It may be a bit painful and messy to lose them, but it makes one a stronger, more understanding person and friend because of it.

I have one of the most diverse group of friends, no one of us is exactly alike and I truly believe that's what makes us work. We don't talk every single day, but I know if I called any one of them up, they would be there with a listening ear, or a shoulder to cry on. I now know that boys can really get between friends, but only if we give them the power to do so, (and sadly, back then, I did). And I also now know that a friendship doesn't mean you're someone's punching bag or someone's pedestal to hold them up higher than yourself. A friendship means that you're equals, so never EVER let them make you feel less than the person you are. It's okay to outgrow people, just don't make someone else feel small in the process.