Personal Change and Friendship.

"A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart, and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words."

The best piece of advice I have ever recieved was from my 8th grade English teacher Mr Bennet. He told me that the defination of a friend was this: A friend is someone you care about, love, want only the best for. AND when you go away for a day, a week, a month or a year...even if you do not talk in that time....when you are finally together again....its as though you were never apart. He told me that if you are lucky in your lifetime you will find 3-5 of these people.

I count my blessings that I have known 3 times that amount of people I will forever consider my friends. People who no matter how you change or grow, the love they have for you never changes. They continue through out your life as you meet and again go your seperate ways...to sing back to you your hearts song.

My best friend is my husband. He and I met in the fall of 1992 on a Telnet BBS. For the first six years we knew each other, we were friends. Friends in a period of growth and change. He dated two of my best friends from college. The first time he told me he had feelings for me, I ask him how many of my friends he planned on dating before telling me. It actually took another few years for me to finish growing up before we started dating and ended up where we are now.

I love him more then I can express in words. But It took me a long time to let myself love him as more then my best friend. Risking my heart was not something I do easily. It is ironic since I tend to love easily. But giving my whole heart and risking it from getting hurt is something I do not do easily.

I have one friend...she is my oldest friend. We met when we were 3 years old. Though our lives are often different, and we have taken such different paths, our friendship has never changed. She and I do not have to share life's horrors because we lived through them together.

Most of my friends are male. I tend to tell people excatly what I think. Women do not tend to admire that in thier friends. I have one friend who saved my life. He is also gave me a "window to the world." Just so when I closed myself away from people, I didnt drift too far away. I could still look out and see life going on around me. I carry it with me everywhere.

I have a lot of female friends I met while in college. Maybe it was the commen struggle to go from child--teenager to adult. But they are some of the best friends I have ever met. Those women changed me and helped me change myself. I shared a journey with them that will forever tie me to them. I can not explain that bond I feel with them. Some I talk to often, others never. Most somewhere in between. But those women amaze me. They are strong and patiant and caring and successful. Each and every one of them. I am lucky to have know them.

I am friends with most of my ex-boyfriends. I guess that is weird. But I think when you care about someone enough to build a relationship with them, you dont stop caring just because you realize you are not suppose to or can not spend your life with them. Ending a relationship does not end the caring. Some of my best friends are people I dated at one time or another. Why would I stop admiring the charactheristics that drew me to them in the first place.

I have another group of friends I met online. They are the people who I have most shared my thoughts and feelings with over the years. Amazing people. Each and every one of them. I hardly talk to any of them anymore, but they too changed me. One girl who didnt know me and sent me a check for books because I didnt have the money for text books. Another girl who married a guy friend of mine. Now we have a child the same age. A guy who held my hand and walked me into my first counceling session after I was raped. A friend I already mentioned who helped save my life when I overdosed at 21. Another male friend who I could count on and talk to no matter what. He always made me laugh. A girlfriend who helped me understand the gift of adoption through her own experiance. People who played such a large role in my life. I can not imagine what my life would be like without them.

Every one of these people changed me. Now, I am at a point in my life where I am changing again. It is so hard for me to meet new people because I tend to not have a lot in commen with other parents. Unfortantly, that is about all I meet as a stay at home mom. My life's center right now is my life as a mother. Most of my old friends have not yet had children or choose to be childless. We have drifted apart because being a mother was the thing I wanted most. We do not have a lot in commen these days. But not having much in commen does not end the caring that was already built all those years ago. I count myself lucky to call each of them friends. And I still would do anything for any of them.