Friendship



 A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow.
 William Shakespeare.


I am a difficult person to get along with at times. I know this. I am not intentionally difficult, but I am seen by some as that way. I am often vocal about how I feel, I am sometimes openly expressive about what I think, and I have great deal of difficulty in keeping my reactions in check at times. I often respond too quickly to things.  I am also very sensitive to the things that people say and do, though I don't always share that publicly. (I am more prone to simply react and not explain why...)  My ADHD also makes it difficult in interacting with others as they see some of my behaviors as inappropriate, rude, or just plain insensitive. Now while I try to avoid being seen as this way, I often cannot keep it in check.  I am resigned to this as my reality. (Don't think of this as a lament though, because it isn't. It is just that these are the facts that I live and work though every day.)

Because I have been like this most of my life I have always placed great value in the people I have called friends. It is hard to live with me given the way I am, and it takes time for people to really get to know me. I am often misunderstood by people. For example,  I have a brother whom I love dearly and it always amuses me that most people often say we are very different. Yet if they really knew me, they would actually find that me and my brother are far more alike than at first appears.

 I don't have a large network of friends. I have a large network of acquaintances, but friends....? Not so much.

 Because of the way I was raised, because of the secrets my family carried, because of the uniqueness of my own life, I have always been careful as to who I will trust and who I will call my friend. And like all of us, I carry secrets that I will only share with my friends.
I make no bones about the reality that, while I have a lot of people I know, few I really call my friends

Two past events in my life caused me to rethink my friends and my notion of them. First I had a friend who I was trying to help reject me out of a perceived notion that I was interfering with their job, and secondly, the death of my father. In the case of the first, it is not the reaction of the individual that bothered me, (we all get angry at times, and I get where they were coming from...), but it was the unwillingness to be open to talking it out, to give me a chance to explain, to listen to me at all.  It hurt me not because the friendship ended, (although that did hurt deeply)  but because my intentions were only to try and help. I tried to reach out a couple of times but to no success. I eventually gave up and have not looked back.

 In the case of the death of my father,  it was the knowledge that even when aware of my fathers death,  some people I had known all of my life whom I though of as "friends" couldn't be bothered to take the time to pass along a condolence. Don't get me wrong, I didn't want a hug fest or outpouring of support,  just a acknowledgement I had suffered a loss and that they understood.

Now I have what i would call my real friends. Friends that I have been close to for a long time... say the past 30+ years. What separates these people from the rest is that despite all I have described regarding how I am and how difficult I can be, they just don't give a shit.  They will happily tell me to screw myself on moment and in the next breath confirm if I am "yes or no" for a get together the next month?  Nothing is held or carried forward and if it is,  it is always forgiven. As one of my friends said once, "whats the point?"  They are and have always been constant in their acceptance and unconditional in their love and support - no matter what kind of a shit I might have been. I am extremely lucky to have met them and to know them.

And one of them is sick. Very sick. His body is slowly betraying him and piece by piece and taking him away from our group and we can't stop it. In a way, our caring for him and getting together with him regularly has become some the glue that holds us together. We all want to live up to the ideal he believes our group should be, so for him we live it. We look past rudeness, and insensitivity. We will not allow our group to do anything but be the happy-go-lucky friends we were 25+ years ago because for our sick friend, it is his reality. His disease does not permit him to go out and make new friends as easily and readily as the rest of us so we exist in the same place we did 25 years ago for him. Because he is our friend.


Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It's not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything.
Muhammad Ali
 

Comments

  1. Patrick8 August 2013 at 06:19

    I've always found it interesting that some people who know us both insist we're nothing alike, while others insist we're very much alike. When they do, I usually agree with them, because I usually understand why they feel that way; it all depends on the context of *how* they know us.

    And I, too, keep a small circle of truly close friends, with whom I'm free to say what I will (rude as it may seem or not), and whom I could tell to go f**k themselves in one breath, and then ask to go for a beer with in the next, and it wouldn't seem the least bit out of place. It's a quality I very much appreciate in friends (including you).

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