If you want to have good friends
You must be a good friend.
Or so said my fortune cookie the other day. This is fairly ironic, sense this is a struggle I currently face. In the past several years, I have seemed to have lost many of my close friends, including the ones I called my "best" friends.
Some friends I've lost simply as we grew apart. Life takes us places and sometimes even the people who say they will always be around wind up in places beyond reach.
Some times thing are much more complicated.
Sometimes it's as petty as liking the same girl. Sometimes you lose friends for standing up for yourself. Sometimes you lose friends for standing up for them. Sometimes, well sometimes you make mistakes you just can't fix.
My long line of list friends could keep us up all night, so I'll save some of those for fueling different fires and just skip ahead...
My most recent best friend was a man named Beau. He was a good guy who was there when I needed a friend and, as good friends do, was able to reach me when others failed. However, this ended when I met the woman who became my wife. One night while the three of us were out on the town, he encouraged me to chase after some bar chick, both of us knowing my future wife's feeling for me. He told me she would only cause me drama and stress and I didn't need that. I listened and left for a little while. I ended up coming back and meeting up with my wife. She told me that while I was gone how my best friend told her I was no good, didn't know what I wanted, and would never care for her. I let this go, although infuriated and the notion of such a close friend talking so negatively behind my back. I allowed it to pass until later he made further comments about the nature of our friendship. I'm married today and blogging about not having friends, so I imagine you know what happened.
Over a year later, I find that I still don't have friends. For the most part, I don't have time. I work full time, go to college full time, and have a wife and child. Friends are loved in my house, but rarely seen.
This is something I'm mostly fine with. I understand timing and getting older. But it still gets to me. Like at weddings when the best man speaks. There was no best man at my wedding. And no one who has stories similar to share about what it means to be my friend.
Maybe it's me. This is something I've come to believe. I am not the best at keeping in touch with people. This has only alienated those who have wanted to be my friends. And I have accepted that this is just the way it is.
Until I opened that cookie and thought maybe I can do more. Maybe I can be that friend I'm looking for in others. And in turn, maybe it will open more doors for me.