You've Got a Friend in Me

I was talking to one of my friends about a week ago, maybe two. He's one of the few friends I've been close to for many moons (since 1997ish), and he's one of those people who I can go months, even years (although that's not preferable), without talking to and yet we're still somehow able to pick up right where we left off.  He and I used to half-joke that we had a psychic connection.  Anytime he had a fight with his girlfriend I would get a stomach ache no matter where I was, and when I was feeling particularly down he would "coincidentally" decide to call me right when I hit rock bottom. When I moved to New York with my ex, this friend was my rock.  He was my first call whenever I felt homesick or things weren't going well with my then-guy.  When the two of us got married to our respective spouses our phone calls became less frequent, our psychic connection became a little fuzzy, but somewhere deep down we've always known that we had each other's backs.

Anyway, like I said before, I was talking to him a bit ago and he was feeling particularly melancholic, as was I.  He had been reading a lot of Rumi while his lovely wife was out of town, and he had done a little soul-searching.  He brought up the concept of friends with a capital "F". A Friend, as he defined it, is someone who you can count on at any point in your life, someone who you don't have to see or talk to to know they're there, maybe even someone who would be willing to hop on a plane at the drop of a hat if you needed them (and vice versa).  He said he only had a few people who qualified as Friends, of which I was one, and it got me thinking about how many Friends I might have.

I've always been someone who gathered acquaintances, or so I thought; although, when I moved to Portland I quickly grew tired of my ever growing pile of one-night-stand-friends and found myself craving a solid connection.  Nevertheless, I fully realize that I am a hard person to get to know.  I don't let my guard down easily, not even to those I'm closest to, and as a result I don't know that I've gathered many Friends with a capital "F". Maybe we're not supposed to, I don't know.  I find, upon reflection, that most of my Friends are people I've grown up with.  I don't mean that in the sense that I've known them for 10 years and keep in "close" contact with them through Facebook. I mean the people that I've known since high school and New York who I've literally grown with; the people who have seen me change over the years and know me well enough to be able to tell.  Even though I only have maybe, maybe ten Friends, I take great comfort in knowing that I'm fortunate enough to have this second family of sorts, even if they don't know each other at all.  They all know me, and that's not for nothing.

Of course, this entire post may just be born out of the fact that I'm about to turn 29 and start a PhD program.  Don't get me wrong, I've always loved aging, but I find that part of the natural progression of life is the weeding out of old friends, for whatever reasons, to make room for new life situations and goals. For as many people who are willing to watch you grow and change, there are always a few who can't handle or understand your need to make the necessary transitions, or, worse, who purposefully or inadvertently hold you back.  I guess reflecting on my conversation with my Friend has inspired me to think about not only how many people I have in my life, but also those I've left behind.  It's a sad, yet necessary process, not that any justification can completely resolve this truth in my mind.  I'll just chock it up by saying life sure is funny sometimes...