Thankful for Friends

Another person in my writer's group wrote about friends and friendships earlier this week. It's kind of odd, in a funny way, that this was brought up as another friend (one much younger than me) had asked all of his friends how we would define friendship.

Then tonight, a friend of mine checked on me because of a FB post I'd shared just minutes earlier. He was genuinely concerned and I was once again reminded how many truly wonderful people I have in my self-selected family. I wasn't down in the dumps like he thought, just annoyed with my dysfunctional family for the upteenth time.

Then another one messaged me about not being able to attend Pride this weekend due to work and apologizing once more for not being around on my big birthday that just passed. She sent along lots of love and "mwahs" which made me smile and laugh. My friends always know how to perk me up.

It's funny how many friends I have that I seldom get to see but are always there for me if I need them. My BFF has flown out more than once to hold my hand while I was impatiently waiting in a hospital waiting area. (They're no longer rooms, they're mezzanines or some other such name).

My definition of friendship was as follows:

The ability to continuously move in and out of the immediate presence of another person and reconnect after variable lengths of time as if no time has passed, with mutual respect and affection for one another.

Tonight that was proven again to me. We may weave a fabric of friendship that has large gaps, but on the whole it's a warm, fuzzy, soft but strong, loving blanket that is always available if we just reach for it.