Far too often, people get lost in the sheer number of friends they have and forget what is really important.

It’s quality.

It really is not important to be the person with one hundred friends because, really, how many of those people are actually friends that you could rely on?

I have spent days mourning lost friendships in the past only to realize now that those weren’t the friendships that mattered. If they had, those friends would still be with me today.

So, here’s to that one friend – the quality friend – the one that really truly matters.

I have spent too long worrying and obsessing over the friends that don’t care and it’s time to put my effort into the one friend that has been there when no one else was.

When I went through my first big break-up in high school, you were the one who left a note on the front windshield of my car after track practice. I had spent the whole practice in a state of distress and when I went out for an extra mile, you took the time to leave that note and tell me that, yes, it would get better, even if I didn’t see it now.

You did that because you listened and because you cared. I still have that note and I will still have it 60 years from now when we’re old because I never want to forget that kind of friendship even if I end up in a nursing home someday.

But I missed the point.

I spent my senior year of high school upset over friends that didn’t understand me and they definitely stopped listening to me. I felt so alone and like part of my world was ending because what friends would I have if I didn’t have those few? I honestly didn’t see it.

You had just left for your first year of college.

The only times that I ever truly felt like I had a friend was when I was talking to you. Now that I’m in college myself, I understand why you couldn’t Facetime every week. But, it’s the rarity of those interactions that made them truly special.

Yet, there was something that I just kept missing every time we got off the phone. I knew you had other friends and we had only met in my sophomore year of high school when I was still that shy girl on the cross-country team.

For the longest time, I counted you as a friend but I didn’t count myself as part of your friend group. I didn’t think I was someone who mattered to you at all.

I kept resorting back to the same friends that never really made me happy. I started to realize that the one friend I enjoyed being around the most was you.

It still took me a while to see the true value in our friendship. I kept telling myself that you had other friends. So, I kept putting myself through the same dead-end friendships that left me alone and upset.

Then, this past summer, something clicked. I realized that I had to stop putting myself through so much stress over friends that wouldn’t even put a single thought into our friendship.

You had other friends, and you still do, but you took time to be with me.

I made one of my main priorities being able to see you a couple times before the summer ended. Our schedules clashed but we both made the time for each other.

That’s something I had never had the luxury of experiencing.

I have never had a friend that had made me their priority and usually they wouldn’t make time to see me unless I rearranged my schedule for them.

It’s been such a relief.

And, just about a week ago, when I was falling into the same old pattern of getting upset over friends who don’t care, I realized that never again would I put so much time and effort into that kind of person.

When you told me how much you valued our friendship, I knew that all along you had been that friend. You are the friend that matters.

I spent so much time thinking that no one really cared. But all along, all the way back to that note on my car windshield, it had been you.

Upon finishing my first semester of college, I finally learned an actual life lesson.

Thank you, for being the friend that cares. When I’m here in New York, a hundred miles away from you, you’re still thinking about me. You’re writing me letters and you’re sending me texts just to ask how my day has been.

Amongst the studying and the homework, you still make time for the occasional Facetime talk.

Thank you, for being the friend that matters.