Friendship Chats

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about friendships. Friendships are something that are so important to your continuing development and it is so important to surround yourself with positive, respectful and loyal people who accept you. This is something that I feel has taken me a lifetime to fully achieve. I have had a lot of friends over my 26 years and I have lost touch with most of them. This is mainly because when I was growing up my family moved a lot and as a kid it is hard to maintain long distance friendships. It’s completely okay to lose touch with people too. It’s a natural part of life. Lately though, my life has had friendship changes that were unexpected and somewhat hard to accept.

When I graduated high school I lingered with a lot of the friends I’d had for a while before we all started to drift off in our separate directions. I made a couple of work friends in the couple of jobs I had when I was 18 before I moved to North Queensland. I lived up in Bowen for a couple of years, and worked in the tourism part of the council. Despite a nutcase for a boss, I got along well with most of the people I worked with, which made the fact that I was very far away from the friends I had left behind in Brisbane a little easier to deal with. As much as I respected and liked the people I worked with, especially those that kindly taught me all the things my crazy boss was incapable of teaching me, I (as usual) was somewhat out of place.

I think a big reason I’m quite often out of place is because I actually really prefer spending time alone a lot of the time. I like to sit quietly with a book and some music or a movie and just be alone and I think that seems odd to a lot of people. I think maybe people thought I was strange for not wanting to constantly go out shopping or clubbing or whatever, and a majority of the time was happier to just be by myself. I’m not even sure why I’m like that. Maybe from moving around so much… I don’t know. All I know is that I like myself that way and I don’t want to change.

This brings me to the main point of this post, which is pay homage to the people I’m lucky enough to call my friends nowadays. I won’t name people out of respect for privacy, but these people know who they are. This post isn’t about disrespecting old friendships I once had, because I needed all of them for one reason or another when I had them and I don’t discount them at all. What is different about the individual friendships I have now is that I feel like I don’t have to try hard at all to fit in with any of them. They’re cool with all my weirdness, even my desire to be alone 70 maybe 80% of the time. My best friend, who I will name, Kate, is an amazing chick who pushes me to do more with my life, but doesn’t force me to change if I don’t want to. All my other friends are just as amazing for a million different reasons. To go from friendships where I felt the need to change myself somewhat to fit in, to friendships where everything is cool the way it is feels really awesome and relaxing. 

I think the important thing to remember with friendships is that it’s totally okay to drift apart from people and simply not be friends anymore. Even if that person was utterly important and special to you. Sometimes even the special friendships fade away. You just have to learn to not be offended or too hurt by it. Try and see it as a gateway to things that will be even better and healthier for you. Trying to grip onto something that isn’t real anymore isn’t healthy and it holds you back from growing and changing into the person you need to become next. Well, that’s what I’ve learnt from all of my past and current friendships anyway!