Friends are often so underrated. Like honestly, I often forget to give them enough credits for the person they make me, the ways they inspire me, the way they shape us as we are and help us navigate into a world that we are all born into. We so often dismiss their worth and value. And to be honest to myself, I hadn't realized how much time we spend with our peers and friends as young adults before the pandemic. It is true what they say, we ignore what we have untill we lose it.
I've had half-assed friends all my life, people who I just talk to everyday about mundane things, people I just greet regularly or do things together occasionally. But then there are 'Friends' who stay by you through stuff we go through we forget their presence, who tell you things that you need to hear rather than the things you want to hear, who reachout to you despite all the distance and hurdles, who genuinely want the best for you, who smile unknowingly when they know you are happy, who defend you without you ever knowing you, who aggressively shower you with love and care and so many many things.
Highschool was the time I found my friends and where millions others too found them. Highschool friends are a different kind of comfort, where we are so unashamedly ourselves. Because they would've witnessed a very juvenile, embarassing version of us and for most of us that is the best way to stay grounded. We don't have to reintroduce ourselves to them despite us remodeling ourselves every other year to be a better individual. They are the friends that we can wear sweatpants with and lean on eachother, eyes closed. They're either the friends that we can be completely intimate and homely with or comfortable enough to try every ridiculous thing this world has to offer.
But then there are the friends that we make in college, where we already have a developed personality and know ourselves and what we expect from friends. College friends are usually a whole new genre, where everyone are so different and unique but somehow all of us would be co-existing perfectly well. Somewhere between school and college, I think we all learn to place our judgements aside and make friends beyond it all. And that's where the fun comes in, where we see things beyond what we usually would have, and experience life on another level.
Friends from different communities bond over different things and have a different way the relationship works. A couple of friends from work are more realistically functional, whereas friends from an art class are supportive of each others works. So many communities, so many levels of friendships and yet more than half the population of this world feel so alone in it. Not because of the lack of support from them, but rather our expectations from the ideal of friendship.
And honestly as much as I'd like to go on and on about friends the way they leave an imprint on us and us on all of them, beyond our choices of actually doing it, it really is hard to make friends. Sure, there are people who make friends and adapt any place they go, but for so many many people reaching out a hand to present another individual is excruciatingly daunting. If only there was a trick to becoming friends, if only there was a way to becone friends without actually doing anything, if only friendships were destined to happen rather than having to write our own destinies in it.
