Thursday, July 28, 2011

with a little help from my friends

i don't understand the people who say that high school was the best time of their lives. seriously? we were complete assholes in high school. we, as teenagers, were like cats who couldn't find their way out of a paper bag or as the gays like to say, we were a hot mess, girl! that awkwardness was the best time of your life? as if!

i recently ended a 7-year friendship with someone i thought would be a friend that i'd be an old lady with.  i'm 32, so you do the math as to how old i was when i met this friend... it was WAY after high school, that's for sure. that 7-year friendship was one of my longest friendships in my life. not just an acquaintance friendship, but a true honest to goodness friendship... or so i thought.

as i was reading an email from this said friend, in which she told me that i had replaced her and had a new best friend, i was imminently surrounded by (i suppose) what she considered her replacement(s) even though (... and this is the kicker) said friend and i have had a long distance relationship for the majority of our 7-year friendship. so obviously, we've had to live without each other in our everyday lives. so it came news to me (and the 'replacements'), that it must be an unwritten law in the best friendship world, and unlike Lays potato chips, you can only have just one.

i was sadden at the end of our friendship, yes. she was the first person that i could totally be my goofy self with, without feeling like a total outcast.... but those days were long gone by the time i was reading that email.

i've always said, that you can't make your best friends when you are in high school because you don't even know who you are much less who anyone else really is. you have to go through more life experience with each other to form the bonds that will last, the bonds that make a friendship. you have to live a lot more life than you live confined to those institutional walls. you just can't come straight out of the barrell with guns blazin' and make the right choices, you have to make a couple of the wrong ones first.

i thought i had that bond... but like many other things in life, it wasn't as it seemed. we had different values, wants and needs out of life. values, needs and wants that friends should have in common... if you don't then what the hell is the friendship bringing to the table of  your life? there comes a point where you have to think, is it even worth it to call anymore? what do we really have to say to each other?

it was like breaking up with a really nice boyfriend. you had wanted to end it for a long time, but didn't want to hurt his feelings because he was such a nice guy and you felt like you should want to be with him, but deep down inside you knew it would never be anything more than it was. so you tell him, then he calls you a bitch and then you're like, hey... what a minute because now he's not kissing your ass anymore and you see a different side of him and you wonder if you gave him a fair chance. then your wing-girl comes up to you and makes you remember that there was absolutely no sparks between the two of you and there are plenty of other fish in the sea. and you're all like, oh... yeah. thanks, wing-girl.

as all this is going through my head, i look around at my wing-girls who have been in my life for many years and who have recently come into my life (all came into my life at the exact time i needed them too) i felt so thankful. so lucky that i had found and surrounded myself with such strong, secure and smart women. i've never had to 'break-up' with a friend before and i was anxious to see how my other friends would handle it. they could not have been more... more everything. words can't express how much their support, guidance and understanding meant to me and will always mean to me.

they made me realize what true friendship is and that they will always have my back. they didn't judge me. instead they told me the truth as they would expect the same from me. that was an important factor missing in my ex-best friendship... it wasn't a two way street and no matter how old we were when we became close (high school or no high school), we both had a lot of growing up to do. the good news, we grew up. the bad news, we didn't grow together. it just goes to show you that right when you think you have it all figured out, you realize you don't understand it at all.
so, no. high school was not the best time of my life. how could it be? i didn't know any of the kick ass friends that i have today. i wasn't me then. i become more me with each passing day. now... the present is the best time of my life. everyday i learn more. everyday i love more. and everyday i am more thankful that i get to go through this journey with a handful of wing-girls that i'm so honored to say - are my best friends! ...plural, of course.

"what would you think if I sang out of tune, would you stand up and walk out on me? lend me your ears and i'll sing you a song and i'll try not to sing out of key."