As our lives move beyond high school and college, the ties of friendship are tested. It is easy to maintain friendships with people in the same location, doing the same things at the same time, not to mention the abundance of free time we had or the ease in which we shirked responsibility. Different relationships require varying levels of nourishment. There are some friends that you see once or twice a year when it's convenient and you spend hours catching up. There are friends that you have all night chat and veg sessions with every some odd weeks. There are friends that you send 12 random texts to on those particularly curious days. There is quite a spectrum and one form of friendship sustenance is not better than the other. Without set guidelines, just how a friendship operates depends on the pair.
I value each of my friends for their individual personalities and for what they bring to my life. Unfortunately, I made a poor showing of this a few days ago to a friend that I have known since 4th grade. If I made each of my friends a body part, she would be the heart. She is sensitive and loving - traits that I lack at times. We hadn't hung out or really talked in almost two months and I think that put a bit of a chip on my shoulder about her importance in my life, which in turn may have led to my poor treatment of her. As someone has been telling me, I'm "such a girl." And well, yes I am. Us girls in our quarterlives are having breakdowns left and right over the littlest things. We're facing all these changes and venturing into a world unknown. Are we crying because we're scared? Are we crying about what we might be losing? Are we crying because we don't want to let go of our post-college glow? Friendships seem to wax and wane, unfortunately those cycles are not as easy to read as other cycles we deal with. Again, I'm a girl.
It's daunting. I'm saying and doing things I'd never thought I'd do or say and I'm wondering if I've lost a piece of who I am. I think a lot of my friends are feeling similar, yet we're not really sure what is at the heart of the matter. I find myself feeling so alone at times and although I'm content with it, something does feel amiss. In all the other stages of my life, I was knee-deep in commiseration with my friends - puberty, identity crises, teenage angst, the college years. I'm beginning to wonder what friendships will endure this current phase of my life and what role I play in keeping these friendships. What must I do? What must I accept or not accept? What makes a friendship worthwhile? It's almost something we take for granted now. And we are surrounded by so many other people and things that our nearest and dearest friends almost become a second thought. I've never been very good at reaching out, but if I want to keep the friends that I've got, I think it might be time to learn.
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