Let me just take a minute to tell you all to back the hell up.
This post is not directed at you, so if you're thinking it is, please examine why. This post is for my friends, the ones who I grew up with, the ones who held me up when I needed it and who helped form my character and beliefs. My new friends would rock your face off, and I should talk about them sometime, but for tonight, I want to talk about my old friends.
These are people who I knew when I was a child, who were still around through high school and our first years of becoming adults. This group of friends was inseparable. We were Fourth of July parties as little kids, sneaking extra pops and starting fires in my grandparents' field. We were ear twists from my uncle and running down to jump the creek and get away from everyone older and younger than us.
We were sneaking cigarettes behind Pancho's after church and thinking our parents didn't know. We were driving too fast with the windows down, singing our favorite song at the top of our lungs. We were our first beer, our first :::um, other substances...or not::::, first cigarette. We were parties on the weekends and watching TV during the week. We were sharing secrets and planning our futures. We were debating Important Things, and righting the world's wrongs. We were hanging out at "the gate" and slipping through the cattle guard.
They were there for my driver's test, for fights with my parents when I was a kid and knew everything, for my first kiss, for every single break-up I ever had, for every new boy I decided to marry, for every crazy outfit, for my first apartment and for moving out of it later, for fishing trips and movies. They were there when I saw both lines on that test, and for all the decisions that came after, and for the day my son was born. They were there for my wedding day, and you know what? After everything we've been through, and the gap that is between most of us....they are here for me now, too.
I have been through hell with these guys. I've even been through hell because of these guys. I'm sure they could say the same about me. Over the last ten years, we have grown apart. Our lives weren't as parallel as they had been when we were growing up. We fought, we cried, we made up and fought again. Some of us have no contact at all, some of us are merely polite. A few of them I can see and it's just like the old days, but only with one at a time, it's been years since our little group has reunited and been entirely comfortable with each other.
Here is what I want you to know. There are many things that can break up a friendship. Sometimes, it's a stupid fight over something petty. Sometimes, we just lose touch and don't really know how to get it back. Sometimes, it's bigger than that. Maybe they were dishonest, rude, or did something else you find completely wrong and you felt that you should end the friendship, or maybe you did something wrong and they ended things.
Let me just tell you that nothing is worth losing these friends. If I could go back in time, knowing then what I do now, I would let nothing my friends did (aside from things like murder or harming children, but I tried to weed those types out in kindergarten) stand in the way of keeping them in my life. When things are just really shitty, I need those friends. I miss them. They helped me decide who I wanted to be, and sometimes, I need them to remind me of that person. Sometimes, I want to know how they think I've turned out. Sometimes, I want to say "remember that time...", and have them say "yes" and laugh with me.
Don't be too proud to call. Don't be so angry that you pick your friends apart. Don't be so grown up that you can't deal with a little childishness from the kids you grew up with. Don't go through the hardest parts of your life without these people. As my friend Sarah said, have a "to be continued attitude" toward these friends. Cherish them, nurture these relationships. They are very important. Who else would sit in the back of your cousins pickup and light farts with you now? Nobody, that's who. Who else would dress in disguise and help you stake out your what-a-woo? Not your grown-up friends. Who else would sit in the garage with you and have a serious discussion about how not to grow up? Only those people who saw you through growing up remember the path you took. Who else can make you laugh with your entire being? Only the people who grew into your same sense of humor. Who else can see you after ten years and know exactly what's on your mind?
Don't let this go. I hope you have the kind of friends who will hold on, and I hope you're the kind of friend who will hold on. It gets worse, and you're going to need someone to hold on to. And then, it gets better.
As Chuckie said when he got his trike stuck, "When you're stuck in the mud up to your shiny parts, you find out who your friends really are." Be the friend who will dig your buddy's trike out of the mud, even if they ditched you for the big kids. You'll be glad you did when it's your trike that's stuck.
