In high school, I remember watching my friends fight and not talk to each other for weeks on end. It was never me, I avoided fights at all costs. It wasn’t because I was weak, I just did my best to get along with everyone and never pushed myself too far as to make anyone mad. I did it because I enjoyed the comfort in knowing that I could go anywhere or do anything without being worried about who would be there to give me dirty looks.

Throughout college, this comfort started to slip away, and I started to feel comfortable with people being upset at me. I stopped caring. I stopped making myself jump leaps and bounds just to ensure no one was ever mad at me. Let everyone have their own opinions and prerogatives, because I am ready to have mine.

Since doing this, what I have noticed is that it’s pretty simple to make someone mad at you. I am currently not talking to three of my very best friends, because of the smallest and most dismal of disagreements. Nothing astronomical happened, I didn’t steal anyone’s boyfriend or anything actually worth being mad at. I simply stood up for myself, and disagreed with what they wanted. The bottom line of all the arguments was that my very best offer wasn’t to par, it wasn’t the best to them. And that was cause for friendship lockdown.

In my head, when someone offers me the best they can do, I take it. In a time where everything is so hectic and out of place, it is amazing when someone makes the effort to include you in their life. So, what the friendship lockdowns have showed me is to appreciate those who do include you, and discard those who don’t. Not everyone is going to drop you over nothing, some people are here to stay.

I am lucky to say that I have three great examples of this. In the first grade, I had two best friends; Tara and Peyton. A year later, Tara moved to Florida and a year after that, I moved across town and started a new school. For the past seventeen years, the three of us have kept in touch and hung out whenever possible. When we get to hang out, we are ecstatic. When we have to bail, we aren’t mad, we understand and hope to rearrange soon.

Freshman year of college, in the midst of rushing my sorority and meeting tons of new people, I met a girl named Kate. She didn’t end up in the sorority with me and transferred to a school across the state a year later, and we are still friends. We don’t hang out nearly as much as we could/should but there is no resentment in that. When we talk and catch up, she always has my best interest at heart and I hers.

What those three amazing friends have showed me is that sometimes someone’s best isn’t all that great. Sometimes it is just a few texts here and there and some failed plans. What we can’t do though, is be mad about it. We have to be sweet and kind, and know that whoever is meant to be in your life, will be in your life.