For Richer or Poorer

Relationships with other people are complicated... and sometimes I think friendships become the stickiest of all of our connections. As we get older and those friendships deepen, as we grow and change, the lines blur and shift, become messy and interconnected. They stop being neat little entities that can be put into a box and left on a shelf, only to take out for convenience's sake. Family is almost easier in the straightforward blood connection. You can hate them or love them, it doesn't matter - you're stuck, so you might as well fight it out or not. There's a complete lack of autonomy in that relationship, for better or worse.

But friendships are different. People that we've known for 2 or 3 or 5 years are easy (relatively speaking) - we've changed, but not that much. You take each other at face value for the present, because that's all you know. The friends I've made in college or at work didn't know me at a skinny 5th grader with braces and glasses, her nose stuffed in a book with zero self-esteem. They may know of that middle schooler, but they never met her. They know the loud, jovial, wise-cracking curly-haired girl with the big boobs who stands straight and always has a witty comment at the ready. Hopefully, someday they will become deep, complicated friendships as well. But the ones that are the messiest are those that we've had for 10, 15, 20 years. You get into a fight, or get angry, and you realize that you're fighting about things that you've been fighting about for a decade... and you'll still be fighting about in the next decade. You can't hide what you were, your old insecurities or demons in the closet - they've got your number down. They've seen it all, they've heard it all, they lived it with you. Those are the friendships that, sometimes, we take for granted. Sometimes you forget that, while theroetically, you could end the friendship and walk away, in reality, it's not that simple. Thhose moments of rage are just that. By virture of the tentacles that we've twined into each other's lives and hearts, they have become your sisters and brothers. They are the ones who will be there when your life falls apart and your heart lies in broken pieces like shattered glass on the floor. They're the ones that will unfailingly show up anytime, anywhere, for anything. They're the ones you would do the same for without a moment's hesitation or thought to the contrary. And when we're reminded of how incredibly valuable those lifeline relationships are, we need to remember to value them more than anything else in the entire world.

"In prosperity our friends know us; in adversity we know our friends."