Life is not like Vera & Rosemary: my waist is bigger, and you suck at tap dancing.

I have these friends, right. They're pretty great. We take blood oaths, finish each others' sentences, call every day, fit stereotypes, look great without makeup, and never go to the gym. Gyms aren't glamorous. Neither is the way you look when applying mascara.

Ooooohh, wait.

The honest truth: I don't just love my friends for their great hair or their infectious laughter, though both are true. I appreciate them for their real-ness, their acceptance, and their shared affinity for G&T. That they are hard-working, loyal, talented, considerate and hopelessly funny, and that when we sit down to play the game of LIFE, I can count on any number of belly laughs. Mostly because by the time it's all over, I'm an accountant with no children, but I'll be damned if I didn't win the Humanibleepingtarian Award and find the cure for the common cold.

I sometimes get to thinking about all the honest reasons why we're friends, and have stayed that way through ugly stuff. It has nothing to do with the aesthetically-pleasing or even what makes a good story. They're so much better.

But. They are that way because the unapologetic reality of it is that we don't always fight fair. We don't function as mature adults when one gets a boyfriend. We don't share a bedside manner (those of us who have one). We complain about 'the skinny bitch'. We don't tell each other everything. We disagree on life choices. We get tired of each other. We are dysfunctional, impatient, and sardonic. We don't always speak the truth in love, especially when it involves boys and how you shouldn't be dating them if you know you'd 86 their ass should someone better come along. You heartless wench.

Sometimes, when crisis hits, we're not there right away. Sometimes we're poor communicators and don't let one another know what we need. We don't always try hard enough, or respond fast enough, or get excited about the same things. We hurt feelings and hold grudges, even if not for long. We give and endure the silent treatment (not the elementary I-hate-your-stinkin-guts kind, but the passive aggressive, I'm-a-grown-adult-and-never- learned-to-cope-with-my-emotions kind) and sometimes we make the same mistakes over and over again.
 

We move far away and have kids, hoping that with the all-too-often silent distance will be the understanding that with the changing of seasons comes the changing of relationships. We know that despite it all, the door is always open and the freedom is there to say anything we need, without fear of retribution. We accept all of this and we adapt, because it's better than nothing but also because we know it's right. It has to be.


We don't judge each other for losing our cool in really unattractive ways sometimes. We want to be a part of what you're a part of simply because it matters to you. But we don't always say we're sorry. We don't love one another well all the time. Hell, we don't even LIKE each other all the time. We are ignorant and sometimes insensitive. But we trust that our fractured selves will be accepted and that our desire (and hopefully, our ability) to let our circumstances make us better people will be recognized. We don't always know what to do when you call in the middle of the night with bad news, but we find out. We have different definitions for what it means to fight for someone, we sometimes move considerably backwards before we move forward, but we keep moving. When one takes more than they give, we compensate. When one screws up in a big way, we remember that we, too, have screwed up in embarrassing and ugly ways.

When cancer strikes, we sit in the park and don't ask if you want to talk. We go to the viewing AND the memorial and laugh when you almost fall down the stairs and show your goodies to the Catholic church. We cancel plans in favor of sitting at home with you even though you're awful company, for as we've collectively learned one pained experience at a time, the ability to exist in present silence is one of life's great healers.

We argue that just because we're laughing doesn't mean we're making fun. But seriously, if you could only see yourself...

We cry with you over the phone and sometimes on your front porch -- that's called getting down in the mud. We tell and re-tell the story about how we fell off the curb and broke a bone, because we know it will take your mind off the hurt you are experiencing.

We love to hate The Bachelor. We dance with the drunk, handsy guys so you don't have to. We drive great distances, only occasionally complaining about the price of gas. We take 'friends tell friends' very seriously, especially where the need to wax your eyebrows is concerned. And we admit that when you get married, we might complain about the bridesmaid dresses but will wear them anyway, because we love you. 

We could probably agree that our high value of friendship came at the price of involuntarily finding the break. That somewhere along the line, we were made to feel unimportant by someone who claimed to have our best in mind. And when we found those who showed us we matter, and continually prove it to us every day, we called them our best friends and threw back a glass of chardonnay. 

We're grateful that 'being a good friend' is relative, that nobody can tell us who we are because we already know. 

So, it's to these women I say: thank you for sharing your space. You know who you are. Thank you for your consistency, your love for people, your willingness to go out of your way, your genuine concern for the greater good, your priorities, your ability to see the forest through the trees, your devotion to prayer in all things, and your comments about going out in public looking like a hipster even though I refuse to be called one. You have permission to fall apart, hold it together, move forward, move backward, eat empty carbs, fail miserably, put up, and/or shut up -- I will love you as best I can. Fighting for and with you has been one big, fat teaching moment. Given what I know now, I hope I never take it for granted but I'm sorry if I slip. In fact I'm sorry if I've slipped in the past and not asked your forgiveness. It's not my heart, to wound by omission. I'm acutely aware of my failures, though I'm sure I have more, and your grace is humbling. You've made me substantially better, and I thank you. 

I could not have put up with me for this long.