Old friends…

I found an old friend on Facebook last night and could not help but smile and laugh out loud a little when I saw her profile picture.  She was one of my closest friends during my freshmen and sophomore years of high school and the memories I have from the times we spent together are precious to me which is probably why my heart ached a little, the way you might remember a lost love, when I read through her profile.  There was a level of intimacy in my relationships during this time that I have not since experienced.  I think I was very vulnerable during those years, exposing my inner thoughts and dreams in a way that I don’t feel comfortable expressing them anymore.  So it got me thinking about friends – those that have slipped away and the relationships we still foster – and the impact each one has on our lives.

I’m a girl’s girl, a girlie girl, a huggy, you mean so much to me type of girl because my girlfriends have, very literally, saved my life more than once.  They’ve given me more than a shoulder to cry on, they have given me a lifeline.

My mother has always maintained incredible friendships with the women in her life whether they are a friend from grade school, high school, college, work, or now, one of her tennis leagues.  My mother’s impeccable example of how to make a friend, be a friend, and keep a friend paved the way for the amazing relationships I now share with the women in my life.  I only hope to pass that onto my own daughter one day.

Volumes have been written about female relationships and the intense bonds that arise from them.  I could write volumes on just a few friendships alone.  I know the ins and outs, the good shit, the bad shit, the jealousy, the loyalty, the back stabbing, the blind faith, the gossiping, the covering for one another, all of it equally trivial and monumental at the same time.  And all of it only something that two women, who have been part of the same friendship, can really understand.  I can’t tell you how many times I have looked at other women and asked them why they are friends with a certain person or that they have looked at me and asked me the same question.  The answer is always similar and it usually goes something like this, “You don’t understand.  We’ve been through a lot together and she’s…” (insert good qualities at the end).  And that is the truth.  The honest truth.  What we go through together and the different pieces of ourselves that our friends know, binds us.  The friendships that end or the friends with whom we lose touch, those never leave us, either.  I think that’s why my heart ached a bit when I saw my old friend last night.  She reminded me of a piece of myself that, while I left it behind a long time ago, still lives on in the memory of our friendship.

~ by dawgedawg on January 7, 2009.