What does it mean to be a friend?
Is it texting each other every day? Is it going out to dinner once a week? Is it calling each other once a month to catch up? Is it writing on someone’s Facebook wall for their birthday?
Does it matter how long you’ve known a person? Can you be friends with someone you just met? At what point does sharing secrets enter the relationship? Do you have inside jokes? Do they know your embarrassing childhood stories?
What do you do when you’re together? Do you have a friend that likes to try new restaurants and is always looking for a night of fine dining? What about the friend who is more content to explore nature and climb trees and slip down water falls? Do you have a friend who is your go-to when you want to have a lazy day watching movies and eating junk food? Do you have a friend you want to travel the world with? Is it all the same friend?
Do you have anything in common? What do you talk about? Does it matter if you haven’t seen each other in days? In weeks? In months? What about those friends that you haven’t seen in years? Do you have a friend who lives in a different city? State? Country?
Do your friends have to be your age? Do they look like you? Talk like you? Act like you? Are you from similar backgrounds? Do you belief in the same things? Are you voting for the same people? Or do you not talk about politics? How close do you have to be to talk about politics?
Have you met their family? Have you met theirs? Do you even knock anymore or do you just walk into their house? Is their house like your house? Their siblings like your own?
I read somewhere that today is Best Friend Day and even if it is a “made up holiday,” I wanted to write an ode to all of the incredible friends I have had over the course of my life. Some I have known for years, some I have known for three weeks. I was having trouble defining, though what made these friendships so incredible.
No one relationship is the same and therefore I’ve deemed it impossible to properly define a friend or even a best friend.
But I do know this. I have amazing friends.
I have the kind of friends who will wake up at 6.30 in the morning just to meet you for breakfast before you leave for the airport. The kind of friends who you can call and leave a “I’m hysterically crying” voicemail and they’ll know exactly what to say and what to do. The friends who you can eat dinner with every Thursday and never run out of things to say. The friends who send you a flash drive full of music. The friends who make you mixed CDs for your long car rides. The friends that encourage you to be better. The friends who share stupid stories about their daily happenings and allow you to do the same because even though it isn’t really important it’s important to you…so it’s important to them. The kind of friends who stay up until midnight just to be the first to wish you happy birthday. The kind of friends that you can communicate with from one second of eye contact. The friends that you share movies and book suggestions with. The friends you can laugh with. The friends you can cry with. The friends that would do anything for you.
I’m the first to admit that I can be Miss Independent to a fault. I love my alone time and I’m very good at being detached. But let me make one thing perfectly clear:
I would be nowhere were it not for the influence of the many people I have been lucky enough to call my friends.
To every single person who owns that title, thank you. I love you.
Love always,
Liz
