On Friendship

I'll lean on you and you lean on me and we'll be okay. -- Dave Matthews Band

I've never been very good at leaning. Okay, here comes a navel-gazing post. No matter -- we all could use a good dose of it once in a while.

For a long time now I've been struggling with the idea of what it means to have good friends. I've been thinking about the tiers of friendships we have in our lives: the people we grew up with (including siblings), the people wet met in high school or college, the people we meet through work, through hobbies, our neighbors. I've always been envious of people who are still friends with the kid they used to have sleepovers with, made prank phone calls with or play kickball with, or spent hours playing video games with.

I changed schools three times in elementary school. No, not because I was a bad kid, just public, to Catholic (grandfather couldn't afford it anymore), back to (a different) public school. My neighborhood friends stayed the same, though. Then we moved and yet another school for middle school. Then my parents and I thought it would be a good idea for me to take advantage of my acceptance to a prep school. This is all just to say that I never had a constant group of school friends from the time I was school-age to the time I graduated.

Although we are miles apart
If you ever need a helping hand
I'll be there in a hurry
You don't have to worry
Don't you know that
There ain't no mountain high enough
Ain't no valley low enough
Ain't no river wide enough
To keep me from getting to you

-- Ashford & Simpson

In high school, when I was having a hard time living away from home, I actually had a friend put this song on and lip-sync it to me. It was really, really nice. We are not friends anymore, but I have come to learn that people move in and out of our lives as graduating, getting jobs in other places, moving, getting married, having kids dictates the course of our lives. That being said, my best friends today are still those I made in college. We have somehow managed to remain friends across time zones, through world travels, marriages, kids, divorces. So I am left wondering, what is it that makes some people stick and others fade away gradually? My friend Clarice believes that it is meant to be that people come into our lives at certain points when we need them to be, that we need to learn something from them, and they from us.

Even if we never talk again after tonight, please remember that I am forever changed by who you are and what you meant to me. -- Chasing Amy

One of my best friends for a long time was my ex-boyfriend. Now many people might say that you can't be friends and lovers, but it was true. We shared interests, sensibilities, senses of humor, views on life. For a while. But then he did move out of my life, but not in a fading away sort of way -- it was forceful. And I did the forcing. So did I just contradict myself? I just couldn't see being friends with him right after, what was, a pretty painful break-up. Now, years later, I see the wisdom of how some exes stay friends. For someone who is so important, who knows you better than anyone else, who is your biggest fan to all of a sudden not be there anymore is, well, just as painful as the break-up itself. Maybe more so.

I have no words of wisdom or insight. I could subscribe to the carpe diem crap of appreciate friends while they're in your life, and move along if they fade away. Be a good, sturdy post as much as a good leaner?

I was just wondering if you'd come along to hold up my head when my head won't hold on. I'll do the same if the same is what you want . . .

-- Dave Matthews Band