And I Know Where I Stand

            I love my friends, but I also recognize that my friendships will never be like the ones you see in Sex and the City. For one thing, we’re all a little too crazy for that. For another, there’s too much drama in real life that pushes people apart and then slams them back together again. The only friendship in my life that has no lies or bullshit and will survive any kind of blow is the friendship I have with Bear, my fiancé. The rest of my friendships are a little trickier. They are few in number and that is as much of a personal choice as it is just how things worked out. I don’t know how I would be in a group of twenty plus people. I like my circles small. It makes things easier and it makes the bonds stronger. It also means people don’t have as far to reach if they want to throttle you, but somehow, the whispering still goes on.

            If I call you a friend, that is very deliberate. If I call you family, that is even more deliberate. Those are not words I toss around easily. I don’t toss around “love” easily either. I don’t tell casual friends “I love ya!” There are some people that are related to me by blood that I don’t even want to say that to. There is only one friend that I have picked up in the past couple of years that I honestly feel is family. Harsh, but that is how it is. My brother is by no means perfect, like the rest of us. He’s just as crazy as the rest of my family. As for the other friends I call mine, just because I don’t toss around “sissy” easily does not mean I love them any less. It does not mean they matter any less to me. Just because I don’t talk to you every day does not mean you are less in my eyes. If you need me, I will try to be there. Even if we are having a disagreement, if there is a crisis in your life, I am more than willing to put my shit aside to be there for you.

            I wrote a blog a while back about friendships surviving. This is not meant to be an extension of that. It is meant to be my way of putting where I stand out there to any who are bothering to pay attention. If you have issue with me, I am more than willing to hear you out, so long as you extend the same courtesy to me.  If we don’t hang out all that often, that doesn’t have to mean anything in the big picture. Bear has friends from high school that he sees maybe once a year, but somehow, it’s like they never missed a day. That is the real test of friendship, and I believe that all the people I call friend now are more than capable of having that. So if we don’t hang out that often, it doesn’t have to mean that we are drifting apart. It just means we both have our own things that we are doing and life just carries us away for a while, but we will eventually find our way back.