Friends

I guess the challenge with this short series of blog entries is to write them without allowing them to become too cliched, cheesy, or schmaltzy. I will just write what I can and write it honestly, and we'll see what I can come up with.

The first topic is Friends, at present my most frequently used Label.

Friends is an interesting topic. I will tell you a story from my youth (which really isn't that long ago, even kind of ongoing). I had a lot of friends when I was a child. I was confident, related to other people with ease, and was generally kind, inviting and accommodating. Then I started secondary school and the era of puberty soon followed, and life changed a lot. Boys, often my closest friends, were to be seen as something different. The desire for popularity soon became fervently strong, and I failed miserably to achieve it.

Secondary school was an immensely tough environment. I made a tight-knit group of girlfriends in Year 7, but by Year 8 the growing pains were beginning to show, and by Year 9 full-blown bitchiness had taken centre stage, culminating in a huge row and split in the friendship group. As that summer term drew to a close, things settled down, we all made up, and the prospect of starting our GCSE classes and getting to know others in our school year group, presented a bright and rosy future before us, as we determined to pursue popularity together. Now, our little group had never been part of the 'cool' crowd - a crowd divided into two main groups, the Townies and the Crusties (in more modern terms the Chavs and the Skaters/Stoners), names and coolness bestowed upon them due to nothing more than the brands they wore - Adidas and Nike etc for the Townies, Quiksilver and Animal etc for the Crusties. So, we joined ranks with several other small friendship groups (male and female alike) that were not part of that crowd either, and we soon developed a third group, a force to be reckoned with, though never quite 'cool' enough. The problem with this new large group that I found myself in (and I'm sure this was probably true of the Townies and the Crusties), was that it was really a big clique, brimming with exclusivity, with a few of us hovering on the outside, desperate to be a part of the centre. I never got to be part of that centre. I was occasionally an object of cruel jokes, more frequently forgotten about, and fairly often stood at the receiving end of the bitchiness from the girls of the inner circle, one of whom had been part of my initial group of sweet, geeky and fun girls in Year 7.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing - whoo cliche! - but it is so true. I still look back on that period of my life with a twinge of pain for my depressed 15 year old self, but maturity and experience have also helped me see that the bitchy girls were very insecure, and created a mask of superiority to hide behind. That doesn't excuse their behaviour, but it's helpful to understand what drove them, and I am now in a position to forgive them, even though my inner teenager still aches.

Sixth Form was a revelation. Our secondary school group was split between three different colleges, which I believe was a healthy change for all of us. In my first year of Sixth Form I was still striving for popularity, hoping to break in with a different group of cool people. But by the second year I had made, and was still making, a few close, reliable, and wonderful friends, some of whom didn't know each other, so there was no formation of a large and terrifying clique. By the Summer of Love (that blissful long summer between A-Levels and starting university) I was enjoying real, meaningful friendships with a number of people, something I had only been able to dream about when secondary school ended. One of these friendships was with my fiance, and little did I know where that would eventually lead (another story for another time!)

University was quite similar in many ways. However, there were some who brought boarding school and thus their immature behaviour along with them. And frustratingly, and perhaps most hurtful of all, was my familiar hovering position in the outer circle of the student clique at the church I attended, the place where I had least expected exclusive friendship groups to develop. That is a whole other story in itself, and the point here is where I have got to now and what I have realised over these past few years about friendship.

Friendship blossoms not from shared interests (although that is usually a good starting point) but through a willingness to make sacrifices for each other. To give that extra bit of time when it's needed, to make the reason you do things together be about bringing them happiness, not gratifying yourself. It is about total acceptance of each other, whatever your circumstances. It is about laughing at random things that other people just don't find funny. It's about having deep and earnest conversations about the meaning of life, whether over tea and biscuits, or getting a little tipsy over a shared bottle of wine. It is about seeing something and smiling because it reminds you of them. And, it about the times when you haven't seen each other for ages, but when you start talking it's like one of you has just come back into the room after a quick toilet break.

Popularity is nothing. It is impossible to be liked by everyone, even more so to make people like you, and if you try then you will spread yourself too thin and you won't be any good to anyone.

My secondary school years were painful, yet throughout those times my family had a whole set of great friends, including my childhood best friend, that constantly reminded me that there were wonderful people who loved me just for being me. I have such a fantastic and eclectic bunch of friends now, all different ages, and from many walks of life. I made my closest friends at college, with a couple at university, I still have great family friends, a brilliant church family, and a stellar immediate family. And I am finally learning that I've made friends the best way all along - remaining away from the clique epicentre, as difficult as I found it at the time, has kept me down to earth and made me better for it :)