Lyrically Speaking: “friends… how many of us have them?”

“Now, you can look the word up again and again, but the dictionary doesn’t know the meaning of ‘friends’.”*

I’ve been thinking a lot about friendship. I was once told, “You give titles away too easily,” and I was offended. But, they were right. I do.

Well, I did.

Friend
Best Friend
Sister
Brother
Family
“That’s my baby!”

I love so hard, ya’ll. And I tend to see the best in people. It gets me hurt and disappointed at times, and I’m working on better boundaries and criteria for investing my time. But, along the way here, I’ve picked up a few people with a few titles they no longer deserve.

It’s not their fault. It’s mine for accepting that I shouldn’t have high expectations and should accept people for who they are. Like, that’s true. However, some things aren’t expectations so much as values.

I value respecting my time.
I value being present when we’re spending time together.
I value reciprocity.
I value vulnerability.

If the things that I value so much are absent, how can I truly consider a person my “friend”?

What are they, then? “Associate” sounds so distant. So, maybe “friend” is a bit of a catch-all for those people who are more than associates.

So, what about people like Kay?

Kay and I have been friends for about 15 years, since our first year of high school. We get in contact with each other a few times a year and, no matter know long it’s been, it’s like there’s no distance at all.

Same with my sister Michelle. Michelle and I have been friends since the MySpace days. She was my first San Diego friend and is my forever sister.

Both Kay and Michelle hold a special place in my heart. They’re “my persons”.

So, how do I differentiate Kay and Michelle from someone I kinda like?

Titles!

So, here we are… circling back to titles. But, like… cool titles, right?

Like I said, Michelle is “my forever sister”. Kay is “my ace”: a title shared with another close friend. There’s “my kid”, “my sour patch kid”, “my bro jo”, “my little big sister”, “my boo”, “home”, “my sis”… so many unique titles for so many unique people in my life.

And nicknames!

Like “Clutch” and “Boobie” and “Monster”…

So, I give titles. So what? Everybody can’t just be “a friend”. Some people are just so much more.

And some people are just regular plain yogurt friends…

“Homeboys through the summer, winter, spring, and fall. And, then there’s some we wish we never knew at all. And this list goes on, again and again. But, these are the people that we call friends…”

________
|*Whodini, “Friends”