I have spent a lot of my adult life moving away from friends--or having friends move away from me. The tearful good-byes, the frequent e-mails and holiday cards that dwindle to barely a blip on the radar. Sometimes, there is good-bye and a direct flat line. It often isn't any one's fault, it's just how life rolls.
Some friendships you fight for. Some friendships don't require fighting, they just ARE and they are REAL. We do our best to maintain, and like an overgrown lawn, some of the very best quality roots are settled deep.
Other friends are BETTER friends after you move away. How is that, you might ask? Well, seriously, I've had friends that I barely talked to or saw for years when living in the same town, but as soon as I moved, the incredulous waterworks began. Then the e-mails, the phone calls and the visits were ignited like a blazing wildfire.
When we were visiting? When were they visiting? Not to be mean, but if I have 24 hours in a location, I am not visiting the friends that I only saw once a year in a good year. We had a couple of situations where I've seen some people more in one year of living far away than in five years of living in the same zip code.
Friendship takes patience and good chemistry. If you can drive a person crazy from another continent, maybe it just wasn't meant to be. Or if friends move back after they have moved away, and didn't bother to ever call, send an e-mail, or give you details about their new address, are you really friends? I once read a quote that said, "friendship is of time and place." I guess this refers to that group of friends.
Thankfully we have friends that are constants throughout our lives. These are the friends that we call for no reason at all. These are the friends we call when the reason is so big, we can't bear to share it with anyone but our closest of pals. These are the friends we think about calling all of the time, but our time is snatched away before we know it's gone.
You all know who you are...
2 comments:
Yup, I totally get what you're saying!!
And there are those "friends" who live only 5 minutes away but can only manage a quick "happy birthday" on your Facebook page 2 days after the fact...then have the balls to call you the next day to ask if you can watch their kids so they can schedule to get a haircut.
Oh, do you know those people, too? Do you also know the ones that invite themselves to a bbq at your house and call at the last minute after you've bought food for 15 and don't show up? Not that I'm bitter about that or anything :) !!!
Meanwhile other friends de-louse your children and take them to the emergency room--can't live without those friends for sure!
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