What a roller coaster ride my life has been with such a variety of people I call my friends! I’m pretty sure, you too can look back into the past and see the people who have been by your side when you needed them and the ones who didn't.
Whatever our experiences, shared or personal, we gradually understood the kind of bond we shared with those we called our friends.
I get it, friendships evolve as we do. Some end abruptly and some never seem to end.
I used to be the kind of girl that never understood how people would have friends they knew for around a decade. I thought they were lucky back then.
Now I’m not so sure I care anymore. I’m fulfilled with the way randomness gave me the friends I have or at least, did have at some point.
When I count the number of close friendships I have, I feel rich. This is the phrase I keep in mind when I see the variety and complexity of friendships I’m in....
A friend for every trait.
I like how I see myself reflected through my friends....they bring a whole new dimension to my interests and quirks.
I have friends with similarities in areas such as musical taste, germophobia, social anxiety, aesthetic, philosophical reasoning & logic, faith, aspirations, nerdiness, art style, introversion and so on. One friend can have more than one similarity...but what I really get excited about is when I make a friend who’s dissimilar to me...I see it as an opportunity to learn to see the world through another’s eyes....to see something different, to learn something different....it all excites me.
It took me a while to get to this point, but I no longer need to have people exactly like me in order to respect them....I don’t understand my friends all the time nor have all the same beliefs they do....but I know how to be respectful of their life. It’s so freeing. And it has opened a whole new world for me.
Friends leave sometimes....some, out of the blue, some, expected...some eventually....and some come back to you.
This is always a hurtful experience. Some close friends remain distant...and a void exists between us when we see each other. Another stinging experience is when you see someone who used to be close to you, and now isn’t a friend at all. And some friendships, never take root, they never happen.....even though you tried your best to make it work.
Strangely, some kinds of friendships come back in our lives, through other people. I found a friend who is like a friend I had lost in my life. And you feel the circle of life filling the gap that used to exist....maybe that kind of friendship was important in your life....and the universe felt it necessary to fill it. I felt this recently. I felt no more the regret of the friendship that I had lost.
In the friendship hierarchy, sometimes we find ourselves feeling something unusual...especially for a person like me....love, the romantic kind of friendship. Those friendships bring out the best and worst out of us...and we take every failure extremely personally. But eventually, if were brave enough to love again, we’ll find the right one.
Friends, through their love, teach us to love ourselves. Yes, it can be vice versa too. Self-love can teach you to be a better friend to others. It’s a crazy complicated web you’ll realize, when you try to discover yourself. I think who I am, keeps changing .....and so, I try my best to stay connected to my inner self....I think I’m worth befriending after all....do you consider yourself to be worthy of your friendship as well?
