For the first time in my life, after the ball dropped in 2018 I was in a reflective mood. I'm not saying that I've never reflected on anything before, but I had never done it in the midst of New Years celebrations.

Maybe it was the alcohol in me. Maybe it was some other things. Maybe it was the fear of the next 365 days which are set to include my twenty-second birthday, my college graduation, and whatever else gets thrown my way this year. But I realized that 2017 was the craziest year of my life.

I mean it was actually crazy. The good times were f*cking amazing. The bad times were f*cking horrible. It was the most manic year of my life. It was a constant journey of peaks and valleys that tried every ounce of my patience, my sanity, and my motivation.

It's no secret to anyone that I've had my fair share of rough patches year in and year out. Certain things got me through each of them. I realized within an hour of being into 2018 the thing that got me through 2017: friendship.

I think friendship has always been a really jaded concept for me. I've never been particularly good at picking friends. I've often wanted to be friends with people that probably didn't want to be friends with me and unfortunately, I would kick the ones that did to the curb. I didn't have many friends in elementary school and looking back on it I definitely understand why. And that's fine. Honestly, I can't really say that I have many friends now either. And that's fine. I have a very large misconception about what happiness is. I used to think that an aspect of happiness was having a thousand friends. As it turns out, I'd take the group I got now over a thousand pieces of shit any day of the week.

I made my first real and legitimate best friend back in the sixth grade. He was a new kid and he was a big kid and I honestly only befriended him because I thought he was going to kick my ass if we weren't friends. I was a scrawny, glasses wielding, buck tooth little boy who had little to no social skills and definitely no defensive skills. I completely read that situation wrong but I don't really care because he turned out to be my brother in the long run and he helped me come out of my shell most definitely. He's directly responsible for just about every person I consider to be my best friend today, with the exception of three others that graduated from high school with us and a couple of idiots I used to work with. Through him, I pretty much met everyone.

I think for a long time I took friendship for granted. I was never treated particularly great by people I considered friends but to be fair, I didn't really treat those same people all that great either. I never fully bonded with most of the people I considered my friends. There have been times where I've even taken the people I have now for granted and done really stupid shit. Luckily, we've always been able to pick up the pieces.

For me, 2017 started off with family issues, followed by a very annoying and sour break-up, and then continued with backstabbing "friends", emotional breakdowns, fears of intimacy, trust issues, depression, high anxiety, horrible horrible life decisions, extreme stress, poor health, lots of alcohol, and did I mention horrible life decisions?

It doesn't sound all that great. I mean I know a lot of people had it worse than I did in 2017 and I've never really been one to look for a pity party but I also know that tons of people had it a lot better than I did. Point is, 2017 was rough. It kicked my ass harder than any other year ever has. It broke me down. By mid-December, after the most stressful semester of school ever, I was officially fried. I'm not sure if I've actually come back all the way yet, which, considering school starts tomorrow, probably isn't a good thing.

What separates this year from hands down the worst year of my life, 2015, is all of the good times that were wedged in between the horrible feelings, experiences, pain, and stress. Those good times were the good times that I had with my friends. This year, I think everyone became more than friends to me. I feel like I gained family members. When I was down, they all picked me back up. And I realized that they've been doing that for a long time.

2017 was full of lessons for me in so many different ways, but I certainly learned the true value of friendship this year and that may have been the biggest thing. Everyone's going to continue to grow up and fade away but it's nice to know that I have a solid group of people that will ultimately be there, no matter far apart life takes some of us, even if it's all the way out in...California (Ha).

So, to all of my friends, thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for helping me survive 2017. I'm not going to say that I wouldn't have been able to without you guys (and girls) because that would display a larger issue here, but it would have been so much harder without you all. I'm grateful for all that you guys did for me last year and all that you've done for me since I've known you.

So here's to 2018, a year that's going to change some of us. A lot will change for me this year. I know one thing that won't. Wait for it, here comes that really cliché line:

You guys will still be my best friends.

I love you all (kinda).