Friendship is a lot like love. We all experience it differently, we all have different thresholds for it, all on some level, we all crave it in some form or another. Like love, it can be the most powerful force on Earth - but like love, it can also break somebody’s spirit.
When you’re friends with someone - and I mean real, true, close friends, not just “we hang out every once in a while” friends - you give them a part of yourself; your secrets, your thoughts, your trust and more. And more than once in our lives, somebody will betray these things. They will take that trust and shatter it like glass. They’ll hurt you and leave you to emotionally bleed out.
But then there are the people who don’t. And those are the friends I’m talking to now.
I am, if I’m honest, hard to be friends with at times. I can crack a joke and hold up a conversation, but I can be a bore, and I’m no good at a party. I can be stubborn and headstrong, and I can be a drain on someone’s patience. But you all forgive me of these faults in my character. You listen to my stories and you tell me that my actions were right (or, if they weren’t, you affirm that the past is the past and I have grown since then). I give you my secrets and you keep them in faith, without holding them against me. You laugh at my antics, and if they’re good enough, you make them inside jokes. You make me feel like I belong, something I have always struggled with - something we human beings struggle with.
These are the foundations of a friendship. But the truest, most loyal of friends go above and beyond.
When catastrophe strikes, and I come shrieking in terror and pain into your text messages and social media inboxes, you drop everything and come to me. You ask how you can help, you ask what can be done. Even as we sit on our computers a nation apart, you reach out to me to pull me up from the abyss. Despite my own recklessness and panic, you all remain calm, and you help me devise a plan to make everything better. And not only that, you all continue to remain at my side, even when the crisis has passed. You keep me in your thoughts, you keep in touch. Miles and miles mean nothing to you when it comes to your friends.
Even without a crisis setting off alarms, your faith and loyalty show themselves in the small things. You send me images of things you know I’d like - a social media post affirming some insecurity of mine, or a funny picture of a cat, or a recommendation for reading or viewing material. You note my behaviors, my likes and dislikes, you know me, and not only do you know me, you make use of that knowledge to make my life better.
All of this, again, in spite of my own faults. When I feel boring, you affirm that I am, in fact, interesting to talk to. When I feel overbearing, you remind me that I am strong in my convictions and assertive in my beliefs. When I feel like my life is worth nothing to anybody, you all remind me that it is worth so much to so many. Even as we argue and annoy and spat with each other, our friendship remains unshakable, and gives me the strength to keep going.
I can only hope that I can repay you all for everything you have given me - all of that love, that joy that hope, that faith that comfort. For right now, I hope that these six simple words can begin that thousand mile journey:
Thank you for being my friend.
