Life would be easier for me if I was the type of person who surrounds themselves with tons of people and if I had a million friends and no meaningful friendships. I suppose I could go out every weekend and paint the town red and not be content to stay at home and have an intimate conversation about the state of my life with my closest friends.
I’ve railed about reality television. But there is something else that bothers me about celebrities. Why is it when celebrities throw a party of and invite hundreds of people we hear that they “invited two hundred of their closest friends”. How close are your friends to you if you need two hundred of them?
For me a friendship is something intimate. Maybe because some time in my young life when I was most melancholic I had so many people around me and I still felt loneliness. And when I started cutting my so-called friends out of my life and I was left with only three girls who got me and loved me, I didn't feel a need to pretend to have it together when I didn't.
My friendship acid-test is asking myself: When all chips are down who will I call? That's how I know who is closest to me.
I am blessed to have a fabulous, down-to-earth God fearing mother. I feel like my mother lifts me when I’m down and no matter how much I mess up, I know she’ll be there to pull me through. She is tough talking, she pushes hard and expects so much from me. Yet she is loving and compassionate. My mother is not my friend, nor has she ever wanted to be. Her role in my life is to guide me, even if I feel like I don’t want the guidance. This relationship is a foundation for so many other relationships. A lot of who I am, is because of who my mother is (only the good stuff!)
I am also blessed to have a sister who is also my bestest friend. My sister will walk through coals for me. We are alike as we are different. We fight furiously, and we also love with the same intensity. If I’m down she feels like it’s her responsibility to lift me up. I can tell her anything and know that it won’t go any further. She tries to fix all the brokenness in my life and I love her for it. Hell, if all my friends turned against me I know she’ll still be there to hold me up. I suppose having her around makes it easier for me to shed the unhealthy relationships I have in my life.
I also have fabulous female friends. About three. At most. Really. It’s not that I can’t stand other women. I love women around me. It’s just that I hate being lied to, even with good intention. If something in my life is broken and I can’t see it, I want my girl to tell me this. I want friends who know me, and really care to know me. They must know the good and the bad and accept both. It’s taken me years to realise that I need friends who are strong, maybe not in the way I am but strong none the less. I want friends who put in the time to call me a friend, just like I should put in the time to call them friend. I want friends who can look beyond the cosmetic and dig deep.
In my life I have also been blessed with a female boss. And really, the three above relationships form a basis of this relationship going in. I didn’t get here and think she’s a woman therefore my enemy. When she corrects me, I listen and try to heed her advice without taking it personal. This does have a lot to do with the kind of females I have around me outside of work. When my girls disagree with me, they tell me so. They aren’t afraid to criticise me and praise me.
I don’t have space for pettiness in my life. Seriously. I had a friend once, I’d do something and she wouldn’t tell me then months later, amidst a crowd of people she would reveal my sin for all to hear. I hated this, and I told her this and yet she still didn’t get it. Another old friend of mine hates praising another woman if it might be construed that the other female is better than she is. Telling another woman she looks good doesn’t mean you are saying you don’t.
I wish we would get to a point in our lives as women where we don’t feel a need to pull each other down. Where we accept each other and stop tearing down perfectly good woman to woman relationships because we feel insecure.
To the women in my life, my life is so much better because of you. Love you! Happy birthday Mom and may you see many more beautiful years!
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