fight or flight?

I am a flighter, if that's even a word. One mis-step and I am about-face and gone, warp speed. I don't know how we develop these instincts or if we are born as one or the other. I think flighters are chickens. Yeah, I'm a chicken.

I have a lot of respect for fighters. I envy them because they have this zeal, this confidence going into any given situation. They stand up for what they believe in and they fight because their morals tell them they should even when some fights aren't worth the trouble. P is a fighter. Many times I've been willing to abandon friendships and relationships or anything for that matter, but she won't let them go so easily. Even when she knows that someone isn't worth fighting for, she still tries because that is her nature. She thinks that every relationship is worth salvaging. To her not fighting is failure in itself.

There was a time way back when that P and I may have stopped being friends entirely. It was during summer vacation from high school. She would call me every single morning and wake me up after I explicitly told her that I just wanted to sleep in. One morning, fed up, we had a little exchange of words and one of us hung up on the other. I can't seem to recall who hung up on whom, but she was the one to initiate our reconciliation. We had a very close mutual friend so we still had that shared connection. We never really drifted apart, we just didn't talk. After months of not talking, she mailed me a card. I still have that card and I think it saved our friendship.

There was a time recently when we had a heart to heart, and again, she showed me how important our friendship was even when I would have just as easily walked away and then come to miss her like crazy, but have too much pride to say so. I'm a big, fat chicken. It is just so hard to bring myself to care sometimes, as if my emotions take longer to catch up with the rest of me. I'm glad that there are people like P in my life. I have a lot to learn from them.