Friendship is defined as the emotions or conduct of friends…a state of mutual trust and support between allied nations. But really a friend is a random human being that you decide is a person that you decide you want to eat food with, talk to and spend large amounts of time with. A friend is someone that you tell all of your darkest secrets and deepest fears, they are often someone you trust entirely—I have those friends and yet I still think it’s strange sometimes that I have poured my heart out to people that I have known for such a short time. Friends occur in all shapes and sizes and we find them in all kinds of places.

As little kids on the playground making friends was easy, you walked up to someone either asked or told them that you were going to be friends and that was that. Now as adults it’s a little more complicated. Sometimes a friendship develops slowly overtime, you may have lived in different places or gone to different schools, perhaps you didn’t like each other at one point. But as time went on you moved closer, started going to the same school, or got to know each other better and got over whatever kept you from being friends in the past. Yet there are other times when you meet someone and the connection is instant. The two of you just hit it off from the get-go and become, almost instant, best friends.

It is so weird to me how close you can get to someone in an incredibly short amount of time and then at the same time how quickly you can lose someone that you were so close to for so many years. Some of my closest friends I have met within the last year or two and within the same year (give or take) I have lost touch of people I had been friends with for years. It hurts to lose those old friendships, you hope that those once impossibly close friends are doing well and you miss when they were the one you could call to celebrate when something amazing happened or cry to when life gets tricky. Yet you are excited that you have these new people in your life. And while they will never replace the friends that you lost they help take away the hurt and fill space in your heart you didn’t know was empty.

Friendship is weird. You tell a once stranger everything that you dream and fear. Someone you once never knew you wind up doing everything with them from just hanging out to painting the town. We all have those friends that no matter how much time has passed when you see each other it is like nothing has changed between you. Our friends will be with us when we graduate from school, get first jobs, go to grad school, get married have kids. Your friends are the ones that build you up when you are down, they are there for you through thick and thin. Your friends become your family.