I'll Be There For You, When the Rain Starts to Pour...

Last night in my yoga discussion group, we talked about the idea of friendship and what its ultimate "goals" are. Should we strive to be accepted by that person? Does it matter if we share common interests? Do we manipulate our friends? We all like to believe we're selfless and share ourselves with other people for the good of humanity, but does that survival instinct of making connections also come into play.

Unless we're all living in a Mean Girls world here, we seldom outright manipulate our friends. I mean, we don't choose who we hang out with because their Daddy is the president of so-and-so record company, or because they have a new car. But I've often wondered if we "use" our friends for that feeling of elation one gets when going out and adventuring with friends.

In middle school and the beginning of high school, I didn't have a shit ton of friends (cue pity sighs here). I instantly assumed that being alone meant that you had to be lonely, but that's another topic for another time. But because I was alone for so many years of my life, the happiness of being around other people was even more pressing. I appreciated the unique-ness of the people I associated with, but like every school counselor in the world reminds us, "everyone is unique." If I had associated with group A rather than group B, would I still have had that feeling of elation when going shopping/dancing/creating fantasy countries with them?

I like to think not. I genuinely care about the friends I have, and they are so terrifically random that I couldn't imagine anyone else being up for Jack attacking or making dance videos to The Bad Touch. When you have friends purely based on going out to parties, you could easily fill in any face. But you can't just have any replacement for anyone you actually talk to--where you display your insecurities/fears/deepest excitements. I mean, imagine if I had gone up to a non-nerd and was all "OMFG JOHN GREEN HAS A NEW VIDEO COMING OUT TODAY!" They'd be all "that's cool, and I'm having greesy pizza for lunch today, omfg." Someone to go out with and someone to actually spend time with can distinguish who we tolerate and who we identify with.

That tolerance, however, can shift. In middle school (you know, that painful time when I was convinced the world hated me? Yeah, that one), I hung out with two other girls that I got in constant fights with. It wasn't a particularly pleasant time, but society told me I had to talk to other people, so talk I did. And scream. And fight. At the time, I thought these were people I would merely tolerate through those awful adolescent years; we couldn't really confide in one another about our problems, so we just sorta glared at each other and pretended our fights were the biggest thing since World War II. Being the escapist that I tend to be, I went to Delta to avoid the drama. Enter the part where frienemies parents are friends.

As this friend's father and my mother continued to hang out, she and I continued to tolerate each other. Our family gatherings were always a bit tense. But we never stopped going. We'd continue to grit our teeth through "so...how's Delta?" and "so...how's history?" without really expecting an answer. Somewhere between 9th and 10th grade, we began entering territory that didn't really pertain to our personal lives: books. TV shows. Movies. All safe zones. We started to hang out outside of the family gatherings without wanting to tear each other's hair out.

Sounds like a not very lasting friendship, right?

WRONG.

Once we got past the zone of indifference, we slowly began to discuss our own lives. We'd ask "how's Delta?" and "how's history?" and really care what the person said. It didn't happen overnight, but because our parents remained friends, we went from "tolerance friends" to best friends (cue the "d'awwwww"s).

So sometimes the true, lasting friendship aren't the most romanticized ones. But they also take time. We might on the surface "use people" for that feeling that we are part of a group, but we are also capable of growing to truly care about and love those people that we first latched onto. You can't really go "friend shopping" and expect it to work out instantly, because in the beginning, we do kinda "use" our friends, for lack of a better word. It's not a bad thing to start out as a superficial friendship, as long as there's some sort of inkling that it could last.

Friendship is a large, complex, mystery-wrapped enigma, so I obviously don't have all the answers. I'm still feeling my way around friendship. But it's safe to know that friends don't just have friends for the sake of using one another (the good kind, anyway).

To all my friends out there, I love you guys, and remember: DFTBA.

Namaste.