I have had several "best friends" through the years. All of these friends were (& still are) good people. Some of them I still see somewhat on a regular basis & others I see hardly at all or have lost almost complete contact with them. Only one of these friendships ended on a 'sour' note, but even then God decided to teach me a lesson in irony when this friend ended up marrying one of my cousins several years later. Being family (in my mind anyway) means being friends or at the very least being friendly, so although that friendship is definitely not to the degree it once was-it has at least become a friendly friendship once again (which I can say does make me glad :) The other "best" friendships changed in status to more regular friendships or just mere aquaintances mostly due to growing apart/different circumstances in life or for the most part because I have finally realized as an adult (hindsight is such a good teacher, I definitely did not learn these lessons at the times the friendships were "changing") that, for the most part, these friends were always way more important to me than I was to them. Now don't get me wrong, they definitely viewed me as their "friend" and would even agree with me at the times of those "best" friendships on the opinion that we were "best friends", but it was never completely a two-way street.
How do I know this now you might be asking yourself?
In all of these friendships, I was the one doing most of the work to "keep in touch" with the other person...probably an 80/20 (meaning I made 80% of the contact/phone calls/arrangements for hanging out, etc). This is not completely all their fault-I now realize that I also tended to be a "needier" friend than they were too. I needed to be in contact more...I needed to hang out together more...I needed to have a "best friend" like I'd always seen in the movies/TV/read about in books (you know the ones-we've known each other most of our lives, we know each other better than anyone else knows us, friends are more important than any guy!) Which leads me to my next point...
Once a guy (or even a "better" person to hang out with in the moment) came into the picture, it was "Sayanora" for me-at least, until that guy or "better" person was out of the picture again. This was always very frustrating for me because I always held the friendship in such high regard & yet this was never quite reciprocated towards me. Inevitabley, this would be the factor that lead to the decline in all of these friendships. I would realize that I would never quite be a priority to them unless I wanted to exert 100% of the effort to keep in touch with them. And once I stopped trying so hard, you guessed it? The friendships pretty well came to standstills.
Looking back on the first 20+ years of my life & some of these friendships always makes me a little bit sad, but I am still, oh so grateful, for the many fun times/memories I have had with these folks. I am also grateful for the lessons I have learned from all of these friendships & the appreciation that I do have now for the two "best friends" I do have.
I have learned from them how wonderful it is to have friendships that aren't "one-way streets" & always enjoy when the phone rings & it's one of their names on the caller ID (even if it is just a phone call to bitch or moan about something ;) I love my 2 sisters dearly & wouldn't trade them for anything in the world, but I'm pretty sure that my current "best friends" are just "sisters" who had been misplaced for years & I'm so glad to have finally 'found' them! ;)
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