Musings on the nature of friendship...

We all need friends. We can all be friends to someone else. Sometimes friendship lives on a surface level, "Hi, How are you?" "Good to see you." etc... This is not a bad thing, indeed it's an important thing in how we relate to other people. Other times friendship can be close, an intimate sharing of what is really important to each other. Who are the friends you reach out to when you need to talk about hurting and struggle and pain? Can you cry with them? These are close friends.

What about when the pain of a lost friendship prevents you from allowing anyone to get to that close level of friendship? It's fair to recognize the changing seasons of relationships and when the hurt is still fresh it's easy to feel like that close level of friendship will never happen again. Can it?

How is the best way to be a friend when you feel like friends have failed you in the past? My first and exceptionally strong impulse is to withdraw, from both close and surface friendships. You can't be hurt if you have no friends. But, then you have no friends, and by withdrawing you effectively cut off your friendship from other people who may need it. Even I can see that withdrawing isn't a great move.

In many ways the last several years have taught me that friendship involves a certain amount of risk, and when it's going well, the benefits outweigh those risks. But when friendship is hard, it feels like the pain and hurt that you risked are much worse than imagined, and it's quite hard to envision making the same "mistake" again.

So... I continue trying to convince myself to make the "mistake" of trusting other people again. Not there yet. but maybe someday.