a true friend

Lately I've been thinking a lot about friends and what makes someone a true friend. Of course the standard answer goes something like, "is always there for you, walks in when the rest of the world walks out, loves you unconditionally and knows you better than you know yourself." That definition is great, but honestly? No one lives up to it. I mean, I may have just had incredibly bad luck in friendships but I've never had a friend who has always been there for me. At one time or another, I've been in a situation where I really needed someone and they let me down.

The friend who has come the closest to always being there for me and understanding me the best is my friend Grace. Our friendship is kind of weird if I think about it. Of the 8 or so years we've been friends, we've only lived in the same state for maybe 3 of those years. We've kept in touch through email, facebook, texting and phone calls ever since Grace moved to Virginia around 3 years ago. You could say that Grace isn't ever really there for me because she lives 3 hours away, but one phone call from her is often more encouraging to me than spending hours with some of my good friends here. Grace doesn't ever make me feel like I messed up, like I just did something stupid and now she'll look at me differently. I can completely let myself go and she won't make me feel like I made a fool of myself. She's the only friend I have who really truly knows who I am, because I hold back - probably too much - with others. Though we have practically all of the same views regarding our beliefs, we are definitely individuals in the choices we make in our lives, which couldn't be more different. And Grace likes me...I know she does, because she'll make time to visit me, or call me, or at the least send me a text saying she's too busy/sick/overwhelmed with schoolwork to call, but she thought about me and she's praying for me.

Sometimes I feel like I don't really have friends - like the people I hang out with could care less whether I'm there or not, like I just tag along with them because they don't want to be mean and say, "Look, no one really likes you that much anyway. Go find a new group of friends." But even that is better than having no one, so I try to think that everything's okay...and maybe it is, maybe it's something I'm just imagining. But even I can't ignore the fact that I don't have much to say most of the time. And when I do say something, it's nothing spectacular. A friend of mine said once that he thinks I have so much bottled up inside me that one day it'll all burst out...and that he won't be surprised if one day I suddenly and loudly burst into song. I laughed because the way he said it was funny, but the truth is that I do have a lot bottled up inside me that I never say. I guess part of the reason why is that I don't completely trust people anymore. I've had two best friends dump me - one without warning and taking with her every other friend I had in elementary school, one who had drifted strangely away from me and then suddenly dumped me within the past year or so. The way they acted towards me had a lot to do with me losing faith in friends. How do I know when I open my heart to someone they won't stab me while the armor is off? And the answer is that I don't know. I'll never know. So I simply don't let anyone close. Is this the right thing to do? I don't know. That's something I'm still thinking through.

I guess it's true that I can't control what other people do. The only thing that I can do is be a true friend myself and hope someone cares and wants a friend like me.

Reading back through this, I've been really negative about most of my friendships. Probably I've been too negative. In the light of a new day, I'll probably recognize that I do have many friends who care about me and that I didn't remember them. And these friends who I don't think care about me...maybe they do and I'm just too blind to see it, or too caught up in those friendships that failed. But these are just my observations on a Friday night when I'm home sick, missing several things I could've gone to tonight. :)