My ideas of friendship are constantly undergoing some kind of redefining. So much so that I can’t seem to fix a direct gaze on it. It is such an easy thing, it would seem, and it comes so naturally to some people. I had assumed that I had finally “got it” about friendship, but I still feel confused.
When I was a little girl, a friend was someone I played with at recess. We shared giggles about teachers or mean playground supervisors. I was the one who got ditched in “Ditch ‘Em.” But the next morning, so eager for acceptance, I would reach out in a juvenile friendship to the girls who had left me in the dark the night before.
As I got a little older I learned that girls who were friends told and kept secrets. To be a friend, you had to know something private and hidden. I was often the third, not understanding the inside jokes and longing to be told the Secrets. I understood later that secrets are something that everyone has and those same girls would have much bigger and scarier ones as they got older. Those they wouldn’t share with anyone.
In the horrible ‘twixt and ‘tween of Junior High School, I found friends and clung to them with both arms, so fearful of being left alone, or worse, left OUT.
In High School we all learned about betrayal and just how much is too much to perpetrate on a friendship and still remain friends. There were boyfriend-stealings, public-humiliations, and the horrible gut feeling of finding out on Monday you hadn’t been invited to what had happened on Saturday. But in a school our size, you still had to sit next to her in English. And then you could laugh, and talk about the quiz on Friday while trying to forget hurts.
As an adult, friendship has taken many forms. Some have been unhealthy and selfish. Some I have used to seek my own benefit or just simply to make me feel good, perhaps attempting to make up for the lost secrets of my girlhood. Grown-up girls still play Ditch ‘Em in grown-up ways and adult sized betrayals often have farther reaching consequences than those when you are 15. I have both done the betraying and been the wounded in different friendships.
Others have been healthy. There have been groups that have enveloped me and loved me, scars and all, for who I am. The girls I lived with in college, the women I met at my recent conference…these clusters have given me a different sort of confidence in my ability to make friends – that being myself is really all I need to do and good people will accumulate themselves near me.
Some friendships have burst into brilliant color and closeness and faded just as quickly. Some have been forged over mothering, over long early morning runs, or over frozen yogurt and have kept a steady pace.
So really, as I am thirty-three and married and mother of two and have had hundreds of different friends over my lifetime, I still am not sure what friendship looks like.
Is it talking to someone every day about crock-pot dinners and toilet-training? Yes.
Is it waiting 7 months to call someone to talk but when we do it is as if no time has passed? Yes.
Is it being sorry about words said and wishing things could be taken back? Yes.
Is it still feeling left out because I wasn’t invited? Yes.
Is friendship being able to sit with someone and watch TV and laugh without having to have a formal conversation? Yes.
Yes, yes. Friendship is constantly being redefined, daily, hourly. Every new or old friend is her own flavor of friendship and I am learning that the only real living moves and breathes within relationships, regardless of what those relationships look like.
I love it! It’s so true, all of it. Just reading this makes me want to call my oldest and dearest friends just to hear their voices.
One of my “old and dear” friends always tells me before we hang up, “Jennifer, I just love you and I’m so thankful for our friendship…” and that means so much to me. Why don’t we all do that more often? Maybe we think we’ll see them again, tomorrow… but maybe we won’t.
Great post, Sarah.
What insight.
Friendship is difficult, I think. It takes commitment and work. It ebbs and flows, it comes in every size.
I, too, have felt the sting of being left out. When I think back on those situations, I can still feel the hurt.
But, all the same, friendship is so precious. It’s so worth it.
Sarah, I am so proud to call you my friend. I treasure those years living together in college. I love the times we get to hang out with our kids now.
I love you and admire you. Thanks for being you. Thanks for being my friend.
This was absolutely beautiful. Your posts lately having really moved me. I have had a friend or two in every category described. I don’t quite know how to define friendship either, but I know I need my friends and am thankful for them. Even the ones those friendships that have faded away. Oh… and this reminded me that I have to make a phone call to an old friend… thanks.
How true – your life mimics mine, in many ways. I, too, was the third wheel – the one always left out. As an adult, we carry those memories around with us – and many times they creep up on us when we least expect it. One minute you’re a strong woman, and the next you are that “out of the loop” 11 year old.
Such a beautiful and true post. Oh, how friendships change but how the innate need for friends is constant and healthy.
beautiful.
i was just thinking about different friendships i have had, and the ebb and flow of them. i have had to be willing to move with them, to adjust (sometimes stomping my feet), to accept. you are right real living and breathing comes in relationship.
I love this post! You are so right, friendship is SO many things. I have wonderful friends, and am so blessed because of them. It isn’t always easy or perfect, but that is what friendship is. Sticking through the good the bad and the ugly!
so true! our friendship has taught me so much about friendship as well… about how it changes over time, and how certain boundaries like age and distance just don’t matter. i’m so thankful for that! love you!
Hello, I just found your blog recently and love how you write…as well as the design. Gorgeous.
I agree with your post about friendship. I think it’s harder for women too for some reason. My best friend and I live in the same city and we don’t always see each other anymore because she has two small children whereas I do not have any. We do however write emails to each other several times a week. It could just be to vent about our day or it could be about American Idol. She has been my best friend since we were 12, we’re 39 now and I can’t imagine life without her.
I have other friends, some who I talk to only once a year on the phone because they live away, but it’s like you said, we can just pick up the phone and start talking right away.
I wish I had more girlfriends around now actually. So many do live away and it’s hard to forge new friendships at this age.
oops… i guess i really mean that since i posted it twice!
I agree Sarah! I have moved, changed jobs, and had a family over the course of the last ten years. Some friendships are “christmas card” friends, some of the friendships have faded, and some have stood the test of time. I think as life changes some of the relationships change. When I had Morgan, none of my college friends had children so that changed my relationship with many of my friends. I was in a different place in life. It is accepting and acknowledging the change in those relationships. I think, for me, is being open and allowing some friendships to develop without being so guarded.
A very thoughtful and insightful post!
Great writing Sarah! I so understood everything you were saying & have walked that road as well. There are those friends that are tried & true until the end..some are just for a season. Great thoughts…
So true… I find myself in this place over and over again. And every time I think I have it all figured out, I realize I’m not even close. A real, true, stick-close-through-it-all friend is few and far between. Every time I realize that fact anew, I find myself more and more thankful for the Friend who never fails, never leaves, never takes advantage, and loves me when I’m not so lovely, you know?
I stumbled upon your blog a few days ago and just wanted you to know that I have completely fallen in love with it. When I get a quiet minute (which isn’t often I’m afraid
) I find myself pulling my laptop over, wanting to read a little more of your archives. Your writing is so… soothing. 
You are so amazing. I love you so much and am so inspired by you. Thank you for being exactly who God wants you to be for me. You are a true friend to me and I will always treasure you, even more than words can say. Thank you!
it’s so true. we need friendships. they sometimes happen easily, but still need to much tending to. sometimes they happen so unexpectedly and after a time. some last, some fade, each changes us.
You are my best friend and I love you.
-C
Quit writing posts that make me miss you. Thanks.
woman. you are incredible.
give us more of this.
Like you, I am still trying to define what my friendships are, or what they’re supposed to be. I think in some ways it just gets harder as I get older. But I’ve learned what expectations are reasonable and which ones aren’t.
I agree with Ashleigh, your writing is soothing. It’s also a great example for me of how I want to write.
I think friendship gets redefined in a big way as adults. Great post, Sarah!
Ahh! Good thoughts. I love how you are able to verbalize these things. Every time I read your posts I think we’d be great friends if we lived in the same place.