I had this story kicking around the website for a long time sitting as a draft. I have had it kicking around the brain for even longer. So here.
Take it
I’m forced to let out a pained sigh as I begin to make contact with the appropriate keys to form these lines.
Friendship: one of the greatest creations ever to grace the planet Earth. A bond so strong that the ones lucky enough to feel the tug can believe and feel they belong to more than one family.
Friendships! Having groups of friends! Man, it used to be a lot of fun. They were the people you wanted to be around, the ones that made you laugh until you cried and your stomach hurt. The ones that while laughing and crying and suffering from abdominal pain random adults were yelling at you to “shut up because it’s three in the damn morning! And some of us have to work in the morning!”
As you age some people find it harder and harder to maintain friendships. With a combination of children eating time like Ms. Pacman or a waning of interests or perhaps it becomes harder and harder to block out a section of one day every couple months to eat a couple mouthwatering pizzas.
You’re absolutely right. That last one does confuse me. It’s so damn hard. How it is so difficult to manage three to four hours to hangout with your friends while eating great food and laughing with people that got you through some of your most difficult parts of life?
To the people of the world that are able to maintain friendships, I commend you. Because I’m not doing to well keeping friendships, the friendships that my friends and I all promised that we would be like brothers until we died. Like how we wanted to buy a section of land put little houses next to each other to spend time with each other: playing basketball, playing music, listening to music, video games and goofing around.
Currently I don’t even have the majority of my close group’s phone numbers in my phone even though for ten days in a row I posted on facebook if you had my number send me a text with your name so I could add you. I received some of my old friends’ brothers and so on somehow made it into my phone. Congratulations to you.
I’ve spent countless hours investing in my friends.
Learning about them.
Finding what jokes work for them.
Discovering how to pick up their spirits on a day that was out to get them.
Rooting for them.
Feeling their pain.
Getting into teams because you love each other no matter how talented or completely rubbish you are at the game you’re about to play. Just because one of your buddies hasn’t played euchre doesn’t mean you can’t fake it and pull out an upset!
Sharing in their unbridled anger when your masterstroke regarding cards goes completely astray. Anger about video games, about sports, about a computer freezing when your term paper is three-fourth complete and you should have saved but didn’t.
Don’t forget the joy of your masterstroke regarding cards winning in a full on frenzy of embarrassment for the other team, the joy about pulling up the upset in sports, the joy of beating a video game with your friends and the joy when the computer freezes, but one of your friends that are amazing with computers remembered to back up the file.
Convincing them that it wasn’t their fault that the relationship had to end. And hell you’re better off without them! Look at that one over there! They are even better looking!
Taking their side even when you know they are completely wrong.
And so many other reason why friendship is one of if not the greatest thing in the world. Yes family is great, but family is better when you’re friends with family. Marriage is wonderful, but how cliche is it to say “GETTING MARRIED TO MY BEST FRIEND TODAY, BEST DAY EVER.” It’s cliche for a reason. People want to spend the rest of their life with a best friend.
That’s why it is so heavy, unbearably depressing when a friendship that was meant to last forever has started to form an event horizon. To suck all the light out of the friendship and everything around it…. END. And end badly. No friendship that was glorious goes out with a whimper. One of the friends holds on to that friendship with everything they possibly can come up with. Every time the grasp weakens another memory springs forward to the front of their consciousness and harder they grasp.
Sadly this is a losing effort because….. You can’t make someone be your friend. No matter what you try.
If you can maintain your friends- do it, cherish it. DO NOT, for a second, ever take it for granted.
Dishing the sadness at an unbearable level,
This Guy