Lost friendship

Friendship is a strange thing, it can stay strong if you work on it or you just leave it and it withers and dies.

There are different types of friendships, friends that you get along with your social status, they come with the family you were born in and who they used to socialize with. Very few friends are truly chosen by our selves and most of our friends come along with something else, there are classmates and friends you had in school, the ones you studied along with to get a profession and your colleagues, the ones you work with and your former colleagues.

Then there are the friends of your spouse, his fellow students, colleagues from work and the clubs you socialize in, the parents from your children’s school, your neighbours and so on.

I have moved around quite a lot during my life time, so my closest friends were the ones that normally lived the farthest away. They seemed to always live elsewhere than where I was living, but they always stayed closest to my heart. Meeting them has always been like just seeing them yesterday and catching up with news has been great fun.

Some friends I am sad to have lost contact with during the years, and some I could not care less about, life being an ever changing element and us having to adapt with it to all its’ changes. We sometimes loose what is essential in our relationships and it all becomes so material and the essence, or the soul, of the friendship is lost.

I am especially sad about one friendship gone sour, having been friends for over 25 years and been the closest you can get, sometimes even closer than my proper sister. It really hurts, and I do feel let down, I miss our friendship as it used to be. I ask myself if it ever was what I thought it was, if it all was pretending from the beginning. It is not that we have lost contact completely, it is not just worth the while anymore, just “hello, nice weather today” things that I do not care much for and just keeping in touch out of an old habit.

I need more substance to a friendship than that. Friendship is about caring and giving, about listening when needed to and just being there…

We have a saying in our family, and that is “better guests” and this goes for “better friends” as well, I have noticed.
The “better guests” are the ones you invite out of etiquette because you have to, because they expect you to invite them as you are frequently invited to their homes and they are most probable to stay out of contact when you really need a friend or something bad happens to you. Like loosing your job or becoming ill.

Your real friends might not have a fancy car, or have well paid job, but still they are your friends, you might have known them since your early childhood, or pre-school years and they know who you really are. They do not even see the façade you are trying to put up with your “social” friends. Life is so short, and our time is limited, and we waste most of it making it more hectic than it need to be, tending to forget the most important and precious things in our lives after our own well-being, our families and our friends…