Friends

We don't have to change friends if

we understand friends change.

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I got an email from my aunt this morning with this statement in it. I see it as a positive quality about myself that I have friends from several different time periods in my life. Alissa and I met in dance class when I was 3 years old; we still talk and see one another somewhat regurally. Jessica and I met in first grade and have been on-going friends since. I visited her in the hospital a week ago!

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Mark and I met when I was 13 at the swim club we both belonged to; we made it through those "finding yourself" years through today when he moved into my neighborhood. I even wrote my college admission essay about him.

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I have a long list of friends from High School - the girls and I get together for lunch several times a year formally in addition to our 1-on-1 hanging out. Most of the guys are at minimum Facebook friends that I keep track of their status or people still active in my life like Sean Murphy who just attended my birthday party.

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College formed some of my strongest friendships as I think living/partying/laughing/crying/experiencing together tends to do when you're away from your family and form new "families" with your friends.

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Once I met Jim I inherited a whole new set of adult friends- people he'd met once he moved to Cincinnati like Dale, Tom, David, Anjali, Jamie, etc. as well as his childhood friends from Spencerville. Though they were his friends first I think I'm correct in saying that they're full-out my friends too.

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Good news for me is that I'm still making friends in my adult life though I find that the common link is work - Annie was a former manager of mine, Chuck a networking partner, my co-workers all attended my wedding not because I should invite them but because I wanted to.

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Probably my newest friends are the teachers at Nicole and Chris's daycare. Since I'm there 3-5 days a week and talking with them, learning about their lives, and them about mine I feel (and I assume they do too) that we're more than just teacher-client. This friendship I value because it's deepened my comfort and trust for them as caregivers to my kids.

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Bringing this full circle, I think that a lot of these people are still friends because even though they've changed, we often change together. We start dating and let that relationship take priority for a while - but as the friend we understand why because we've been there too. We cancel plans because work ran late but the other person gets it because they've had to cancel before too. We go for weeks without talking (I mean talking talking, not online talking) but don't take it personally because we all recognize that day-to-day life gets in the way and it's nothing personal.

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The friends that have "slipped" I think are mostly a result life moving on and in a direction that no longer makes cultivating/maintaing that relationship a priority. Let's be honest, some people we honestly don't care about that much (in comparison to other things/people) at the time so losing them in the future isn't really a loss. This is what leads me to ignore Facebook friend requests. Other friends move in directions that the effort isn't worth following mostly because you don't care about/agree with the new path or because your path is diverging too. I have an ex who I think of sometimes and wonder what he's up to. He's on the West coast and last I knew still living the single life of partying, working too many hours, etc. versus my path of Midwestern married with kids. We don't have much in common other than our memories I suspect. My thoughts of him are curiosity-based because I once knew him, not because I want to know him.

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This was long. Not sure it really has a point other than just documenting thoughts on "paper". I guess that's good sometimes too...