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adulthood, best friends, experience, Growth, Learning, Life, living, Love, Opinion, Personal Experience, personal growth, Relationships, time, time mangement, Understanding
When I was younger, my dad used to tell my sisters and I that our closest friends in life would be one another. He would make a point of making the three of us stand in the kitchen and hold up 5 fingers, he would then instruct us to put down three fingers, leaving just two; those two fingers symbolized how many true, best friends we’d have in life— each other.
I went through my childhood, teens and even early adulthood thinking my father was crazy. He didn’t have many people he would consider his friends which is why, I assumed, he was so pessimistic about the likelihood of remaining close to my friends from school. During these years, my sisters were the LAST people I wanted to hang out with. It honestly wasn’t until I moved out and my middle sister moved away that I began to believe my father.
Life has a way of changing the way you see the world, sometimes. Change can be good and it can also be bad, and the only thing we know for sure is the inevitability of said change. As life goes on, we learn and grow. We learn about ourselves, the world, your family, friends… everything. It’s almost like we’re in a long, never ending hallway, with tons of doors and endless possibilities to learn. With each day that passes, we change ever so slightly; in a way that helps to develop us as an individuals. Now, here comes the tough part; as we’re growing and changing, everyone around us is doing the same.
While these changes can help us grow closer to our loved ones, it can also have an inverse affect. My dad’s theory really started to become real to me, once I realized how different I was as a person. As my circumstances changed (pregnancy) and I was unable to do the thing I used to (drink) I began to lose touch with some of my friends. It was as if everyone I was close with and regularly hung out with fell off the face of the earth once I had a bun in the oven. I even had one friend tell me that she was giving me space and time to be with my family… I know this to be a bold face lie. (I couldn’t get drunk with her and I refused to be her designated driver when she went out, so she wanted nothing to do with me.)
Don’t get me wrong, prior to pregnancy, my friends and I didn’t hang out too much; we did text throughout the week but other than that, face to face meetings were few and far between. My sisters were the ones that were there for me when I felt alone; they talked to me, checked on me, spent time with me …. They were there for me when no one else was (my son’s father was in the picture, at the time but having him around wasn’t the same as having my friends… it’s a long story, there).
It may sound as if I resent my friends for not being present during these drastic physical and hormonal changes I experienced, I wasn’t at all; but their lack of presence really made me appreciate my sisters like never before. (Being the eldest daughter, I always saw my sisters as these little girls but having them by my side during my journey into motherhood really made me see them in a different way.)
At this present moment in life, I’m the mother of an (almost) two year old and if I hold up five fingers and remove three, my closest friends are and always will be my sisters; and I’m surprisingly okay with this. I mean, it sucks that my dad was so right about something so negative; however it’s a part of life.
I learned a long time ago that while everyone has their own things going on in life and we’re all busy, but we still make time for the things and people we love.
Currently, my father’s opinion on friendships is an accurate description of my friendships, but that doesn’t mean it will remain that way. While losing friends or just losing the closeness that we shared sucks, it doesn’t mean that I’m done with making new friends. Friendships are much like relationships in the sense that the best ones are found when you least expect them. For now, I’m just going to enjoy my sisters as my closest friends and just wait. For all I know, I’m creating a lifelong best friend as we speak!
And dad, if you’re reading this, you were semi-right. My two best friends are my sisters but there’s always room for a few more (friends, not sisters)!
Simply, Tiff 🙂