My Best Friend

So I've broken some of my rules, but for the most part my quest for stability and answers is coming along. Not fast, but coming. I've been working a lot these past few days, and despite the numerous forced conversations with customers (I'm a server), I have had a great deal of time to start thinking about which mess to tackle first. I made a list of them (I'm a list girl), in no particular order. But I found that the first one on the list was the one that has been most mind-consuming since I can remember. So here goes.

From my first "best friend", Jenna, in preschool I have always struggled to grasp the concept of friendship and how exactly to be a good friend. I don't remember every detail of my friendship with Jenna, all I know is that I loved going to her house, playing dress up and placing fake McDonald's orders in her basement. We were inseparable. Then Jenna's parents got divorced, she moved out of Missouri and I had lost my first "best friend". Then I started school, I had two "best friends" in grade school - Carly and Diana - and all I can remember of them is sitting on the bench at our elementary school and talking the entire lengthof our recess. Then there was Stacy and Jesse in the 3rd grade, Anne in 4th, a group of clicky girls in 5th, and then my middle school crew of girls (Kristi, Stacy, Casey and myself) who went to Florida with me in 8th grade and spent a week with my grandparents. In highschool I was a drifter, and I can honestly say the longest "best friend" I've had, Casey, stayed my best friend throughout. In all cases, I admit I'm guilty of saying "BFF" - we'll never lose one another. Inevitably we did. With the exception of Casey, I've grown in and out of friends over and over again.

My freshman year of college, again I found myself another group of four. And a random roommate, who at the time was my counterpart. It seemed as though I never knew a "best friend" until meeting her. I can't exactly pin-point why, but she was a very special person to me and weighed heavily in my debate on whether or not to take the leap I had been throwing back and forth to transfer from my small private college to a huge state university. Despite the good company, I wasn't happy with the school I was at and I was hungry for change. At the same time, terrified to lose my then best friend and the comfort of home. I opted for change, with the stipulation that I wouldn't lose touch with my best friend and would come home often to visit the family. And for the first year, I was shocked at how well everything seemed to work out!

I guess here is where I should pause and explain why the "best friends" in my life and the type of friend that I am have been tossed into my "mess" pile. I have never felt worthy of being labeled a "best friend". I've never felt that I could truly be a best friend to someone, not because I didn't want to but because I honestly don't believe I am capable of that high-calling. First of all, I always want everyone to be included, feel loved and accepted by me. And I've always felt like with the notion of the "best friend" someone is always at the mercy of being left out. If you're not my "best friend", I don't mean as much to you as that person. It's difficult to put into words, but basically, I've always felt guilty naming a best friend and being named one. It doesn't really fit with how I view people and how human love should operate. Secondly, I can't keep secrets. This is a truth about myself that I've recently come to and while I can openly admit this, it doesn't necessarily mean that it is right or a good characteristic or wrong and makes me a horrible person. It's just the truth about me. In fact, I often wish I could go back in time and warn my old "best friends" against telling me anything potentially secretive. I've always been someone that people will talk to, but the second someone tells me something followed by "now don't tell anybody this" something inside me suddenly starts burning to tell. I can only offer one explanation for this - and it's that typically secrets are the information I really didn't want to know. It's like here - let me get this off my chest and bear what's troubling you, for you, and not help you find any sort of a solution. It's the information that makes me angry or concerned. And when I have a piece of information like that burning within, well I want to share. I want to get a second opinion. I want to know why it's bothering me so much. I want to help. And I think this is why I've never been able to have a "best friend". It's a difficult realization to come to, but in my thinking and reflecting, I can tell you that it's about time I admitted it. And I guess with me, well I don't tell anyone anything that anyone else can't know. I don't have deep dark secrets. I've always laid my life right out there for everyone to know. My faults, my feelings, my successes and my failures. So when people find out things about me, I'm not looking for the person who told them usually. My life is what it is. With that being said, I realize that not everyone has this mindset and therefore I have lost a great deal of "best friends" to my inability to keep a secret.

Now, here lies another difference between myself and those who have come to disown me as a "best friend": I don't define trust by a person's ability to keep a secret. Let me explain. Trust, to me, is knowing someone will be there regardless of your faults. It's more strongly tied to confidence than it is to secrets or confidentiality. The people I trust, are the people who have proven over and over that they will be there. They tell me when I upset them, they tell me when they think I've done something wrong, and they are always, immovably right there. I trust those people. And the people who trust me, trust me because I am there, physically and emotionally to support them and love them no matter what. I don't want to be trusted because I can keep my mouth shut, I want to be trusted because I love you and because you know that you can always count on me. And by count on me, I mean count on me to be dead honest with you and to share my life, time, and heart with you. I honestly don't trust the people who keep secrets or want me to keep their secrets for them. And for this reason, I have had much difficulty finding or even desiring to have a "best friend".

I think that the people who I now consider (but don't necessarily label) my best friends are those people I described above. I will forever cherish the "best friends" that I've lost touch with or who have come to dislike me for being the person that I've always been. I will always want to be on better terms than I am with these people, but what I've come to realize is that no apology or attempt to right things will actually win back my old "best friends". Because the truth about them is that they've realized the truth about me, and they don't like it. There is not a thing in the world I can do about that, besides apologize for trying to live up to their standards of a best friend (standards which differ from the type of best friends I want and want to be).

So, have I found an answer to the troubled heart I've had over lost best friends? Yes. I do have friends now who I trust and love to be with. I think my honesty with them, my forewarning to them, has brought me to be a better friend and also to seek out people who actually have the desire to be a friend to me. I don't think everyone really wants to invest the time it takes to be a true friend, and as I work on being there for my friends, I've found that I now have friends who reciprocate this rather than accept it and hoard it.

Further, my true best friend is me. As I was reading Eat.Pray.Love. today, I remembered that all old and new "besties" aside, I have always had and will always have me. "Never forget that once upon a time, in an unguarded moment, your recognized yourself as a friend." I have not been the best friend to my "best friends" my entire life. But I have been there, for a number of friends, in a number of places, throughout. In all instances, even if my sole purpose was to be there and support someone through a bad break-up, a death, or just a bad day, I'm thankful for the experience and the opportunity to share my love with all of my former (and current) "best friends".

So rather than continue to worry and feel guilty about old friends who no longer worry about me, I'm sorting this "mess" out by reminding myself that I am very capable of being a best friend. To myself. And as my own best friend, I'm saying that I'm okay, that I am not all that bad of a friend, and that I'm capable of being a good friend to those who have stuck with me (thank you Casey, Stacey, Jas, mom and Susie) and those who currently provide me with daily joy and much needed good company (my SB's). As my own best friend, I am telling myself to accept the past, and to stop worrying about the type of friend my friends-no-longer think I am or am not.