Friends 'Till...Well... (Holly Schindler)

In my nearly 50 years of life, if there's one thing I've learned about friendship it's this:

The people you find standing there with you the longest--or love you the most--or show up when you need it--are always, always, always the ones you least expect. 

And the ones you expect to be with you for the rest of your life always, always, always turn out to be the most fragile friendship of all. 

 

I'm not sure why this is, but I've seen it over and over again. The person who floats to the top of my mind right now when I hear the word "friend" is actually someone I never thought I'd hear from again after we went our separate ways...in 1998.

And yet, here we are.

At this point in my life, I also do everything I can to let the warmth of these surprises completely overwhelm the shock and the hurt of those friendships that don't make it. 

I also find myself gravitating more often toward writing about surprise relationships. Surprise friendships. People who show up for each other that were never supposed to be there at all. 

It really is true that some things never die. Some loves--and friendship is, in fact, a love. Maybe the most important of all--do survive. 

But it is never wearing the face you imagined in the beginning.

~

Holly Schindler is the author of A Blue So Dark.