I have had every type of friend you can imagine. The smart friend, the funny friend, the artsy one, the athletic one, the party girl and so many more. After experiencing so many different friendships I figured out which type is the best: the quality friend. The friend or friends that will always be there for you no matter what. The ones that you can count on to be there for you when you're at your best and the ones who will, sometimes, be the only ones there when you are at your worst. This is when the quality of friends becomes so much more than the quantity you have.
I constantly see people posting pictures of themselves with dozens of others smiling and posing together. I used to question if I was doing something wrong. Why didn’t I have pictures like that? Why wasn’t I fake laughing and squatting with so many others? It always looked like so much fun to me and I was honestly jealous that I didn’t have that many friends to spend my time with. Feeling jealous of pictures that I saw on social media made me stop and slap myself for a second and think about what I was actually jealous of in the first place. After thinking, I came up with nothing to be jealous of…other than maybe wishing I had half of the girls' shoes they were wearing.
I realized I had nothing to be jealous of because I have my family and, although small, a great group of friends. We are all so different from each other but oddly enough, that’s what brings us together. It is never boring hanging out with one another because we all have so much to bring to the table. Most importantly, while the quality of our conversations may not always be grade A, the friendship always is.
I was the minority in my friend group during my freshmen year of college because I chose not to join a sorority. The whole idea of sororities never made sense to me and I didn't like the idea of having to pay for "friends." I know that's the classic line for those who badmouth sororities and fraternities but I promise that’s not what this article is about. I simply chose to make friends a different and slightly cheaper way.
Over the years I have simply gotten more selective about who I share my time with. That’s not to say that I have invitations every hour on the hour but I am not as worried about accumulating a large group of friends as I once was. I realized that, to be quite frank; if I don't like you, I'm not going to make time for you. It's as simple as that. I don't understand the point in hanging out with a huge group of people unless they all mean something special to you. With my crazy schedule if I have a free day you can bet I will try to make time for those who I know would do the same for me.
I want the friends that I can call at 2am because I'm sad or maybe because I just want to get pizza and going alone is weird…even though I'd still do it if I was desperate. I want the friends that are going to wish me luck and mean it before I have a big test or job interview because they genuinely care about my success and I theirs. I want the friends that know nothing about what I'm studying but will still sit there and let me read my notes to them and act like they care. These friends are the quality I have and will always look for before I settle for a quantity. When friends start to feel like family, you know the quality is lifetime guaranteed.
