friendships

Lately I’ve been giving some thought to friendships; my friendships with people and friendships in general.

When you’re young, going through your educational career and essentially, your formative years, your friendships are everything, they’re a distraction and an escape from long nights of studying, they guide you through making choices about your future and they talk you through bad breakups.

But as we grow up, we leave school, start our careers, begin serious relationships – why do our friendships begin to disintegrate? Granted, we don’t rely on our friends as much to help us through every dilemma because at this point in our lives we have enough life experience of our own to guide us in making the right decisions. But is that enough of a reason to give up on our friendships? Shouldn’t your friends be there for you no matter what? Through your first real job, being let go from your first job, your first promotion, your first raise, your first serious relationship, your first apartment, possibly your engagement, planning your wedding? Even though you’re not all at the same place in your lives at the same time; you may have graduated first and embarked on your career before the others, you may be offered a job across the country and are the first of your friends to leave the comfort of your surroundings, you may be the first to get engaged – but, if you consider your friends your true friends, wouldn’t you want them there, by your side, helping you through it all? And even if they don’t have the personal experience to guide you through it, wouldn’t you want them there to hear you gripe about your boss? About the troubles of finding an apartment? About the headaches of wedding planning? Afterall, we’re brought up believing that our friends will be there for us no matter what, through thick and thin.

The reality of the situation is not that, however. We become engrossed in our own lives and caught up in pettiness and we brush our friendships to the side. It is my personal belief that life happens – we don’t have the time to give every single one of our friends a call every night to catch up on their day, but when it comes to true friendships; they shouldn’t hold that against you. Instead, you should cherish the moments you do spend together, and be able to talk and gossip as if you haven’t spent a minute apart.

xo