There's this saying about how there are three types of friends: friends for a reason, friends for a season, and friends for a lifetime.
My current friends up until college have been friends for a lifetime. For most of my life, I've had a close knit group of friends that, to this day, I still consider friends. No matter when we met up, it was as if time never changed. I guess it was easier then because we'd be raised the same way, so there was seldom different perspectives on core values, life, etc. There wasn't much conflict regarding values, and it'd be more in-the-moment fun.
After being in college for a year, I've realized that I needed to change my definition of what a friend is to me. Up till then, I'd only consider people I chose to talk to everyday a friend. Only the closest people in my life were my friend; everyone else was an acquaintance. It was very cut and dry for the people who made the roster.
Things are different now. These college friends so far have been friends for a season or a reason. It's been pretty tough to try and only have one small group of friends. There are so many people that you will meet, and they will come from diverse backgrounds. They won't be as homogenous as the people in your hometown, and I've found that there's a lot more that I can learn from or that I'm unfamiliar with.
But friendship isn't about what people have in common, though it can make friendship easier. It's about peeking into the life of another person and having empathy. It's about the acknowledgement that there's growth in both parties. It's about the comfortability when spending time with them. About knowing that you will make an impact on their life and vice versa. About trust and respect. And those are just the foundational things about friendship. I've learned recently that personally, I need a lot more in order to want to maintain one.
Of course, there needs to be mutual respect for one another, but what does that look like? For me, it all comes down to communication. And yes, what a basic answer, but it's been tried and tested. When there isn't communication in my friendships, I feel like it's due to an imbalance of the investment of friendship or at least a lack of an understanding of so. And from that, there can be a sense of resentment because needs aren't met. It feels very heavy when friend A cares more than friend B about hanging out and supporting them, and having the conversation is uncomfortable, so with this imbalance, I feel like it makes sense for tension to build up. The transparency of expectations between friends are vital, and I've found that the way to avoid complications in relationships is to just... tell the truth... I know it seems like a pretty elementary idea, but you'd be surprise at how much people just... don't? Or maybe I'm not really seeing it from the other perspective.
The general foundation of mutual respect and communication and transparency need to be there, but I find it hard to be friends with people who don't emulate an overall sense of humility. It's been an important trait that my parents encouraged, and with all of my close friendships so far, I've been used to it. Meeting all of these people in university really enforced my value for humility. From my experiences of the past year, it's been an unnecessary friction and irk for me to interact with people who aren't so, and it made me think a lot more about my normal compared to the university's normal and the country's normal and the world's normal. I've been privileged not to have these experiences for so long and to think that everyone lived authentic and modest lives, and I'm grateful that there were so many learning experiences.
Speaking of learning experiences, like I said before, I've kept my elementary, middle school, and high school friends, so I was unfamiliar to changes in friendships. This past year has been a rollercoaster regarding platonic breakups and fallouts. As I learn more and more about myself, I've found that the boundaries that I need in place come first before my friends do, and that's caused a lot of hurt on both sides. I used to try to let things go in order to maintain friends with people, but I've learned that it's not healthy, and it only hurts me more. Learning how to place and maintain boundaries came at the cost of friends who didn't understand the importance of it to me, and it's frustrating, It's frustrating that I feel selfish whenever I do it even though I know it's best. It's frustrating that I can't control the situation or make my friends understand. It's frustrating when the people I trusted and loved and leaned on are now gone. And it's frustrating that I'm trying to convince myself that I'm wrong and that no one will respect this and I'll end up alone.
It's what's best though.
Even if I'm alone, it's what's best.
A friend once told me, "Friendship is an addition to your life." It was hard for me to believe. It's still hard for me to believe. All my life, my best and most memorable moments were with my friends, and to say that they are only an addition felt that it didn't do it justice. And maybe it's my incapability to be alone alone or my inability to truly be myself with my family, but I can't imagine that they are only an addition. I have no problem being alone for periods of time, but I feel like I always come back to them. My friends have gotten me through the worst, and yes, I can hypothetically live without them, but I cannot live without them. You know?
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