If you Googled "friendship," then you'd definitely find some cheesy quotes about people being each other's "pillars of strength," "partners in crime" or something like, "Friendship is like pissing in your pants: everyone can see it, but only you can feel the warmth." Friends are your daily reminders, your backbone and your only strength on your bad days, reminding you that no matter how bad you screw up, they'll have your back even if the world turns against you.
They help you see the bright side in your darkest moments. They become so essential to our lives we struggle to make it through a school day without them. We tend to fail that one course they aren't in, are happier on their birthdays than on ours, would rather eat their peanut butter sandwich than ours and, therefore, we start to believe our one true love is none other than our best friend.
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We're all different and that's OK. Some of us enjoy conflict and aggressiveness in our relationships and consider fighting good when for something worth the effort. Most people tend to thrive on the complete opposite side; they believe that they have their own battles outside their personal relationship they have to fight. Neither one has to be "right." They consider fighting wrong, even for a cause or a person worth fighting for circumstance, even if it pits you against the world. And people have every right to agree to disagree.
I've learned that friendships live and die by how we confront our limitations and differences, and people can only do their parts as honestly and bluntly as they wish. People can be held responsible for only their own words or actions and not another's. Sometimes you have to cut ties with precision; sometimes you do it because you just can't afford to lose who are, so you choose to lose them instead. At some point, we'll be proud of ourselves for that.
Sometimes it still hurts years after your choice, but it's never too late to realize that it's no longer your burden. I've learned that as we tend to grow older, some people never will appreciate how you've changed. That's OK too, because you chose to become who you are and no one else.
It's not OK to apologize and repeat your mistakes again and again. That's more like, "Hey, I'm warning you that this might happen all over again. So just get used to the fact that I don't actually care even if it does." It's just really gamey, you know?
Knowing the above, I'm really grateful for the small number of friends I'm blessed with and have always been a part of my successes and failures — the old, the new and the growing ones. Thanks to all of you who have taught me how to accept the love and what true friendships really are.
