Friends

Author's Note: I wrote this essay on what I don't do in a friendship that are probably some of the most important things that hold a friendship together. I have realized why with the help of two of my best friends along the way, but you will hear more about that in the piece. Let me know what you think!

To find a real friend is to find someone who knows just about everything about you. Someone who actually cares about how you feel, and someone who is there through it all so that they know what is going on. This is hard to come by. Of course there are some things I do regret about some of my past friendships, and things that I would change about each of them. A lot of those different things happen to be stuff that all strong friendships should just have, but mine never seemed to. I would have opened up more about what was actually going on in my life. I would tell them different things they wanted to know, even though I may not have trusted them 100%. I would most importantly tell them why I was mad at them, if I ever was, but most of the time I would just leave it and not talk to them. I never understood why I did most of these things until I became best friends with two very important people. Yes, we may argue sometimes, but it never lasts long, one thing I know we will never do is hide things from each other. I don't know why I never did these important things in my past friendships, but going forward I know why I won't ever do them again. 

People turn on you, it's true as much as when we are little we don't believe that it is possible to loose any friends, but it is a lot easier to loose them than to gain them. I never liked to tell anyone about my home life. Frankly I thought it was none of their business. I was at school, not at home. Why should you care about what my parents are like, and how my household runs. I have realized that they only want to know so that it isn't awkward if they ever come over to your house. I still don't tell many people about my mom for reasons that no one really needs to know. Usually I like to tell my friends about my dad. Either way they would like my dad a lot better. But sometimes it just isn't the right time to ask someone about their family usually when I first meet someone my questions are a lot more like do you have any siblings, and are they younger or older. Then if your friendship grows you will find out more. My friends just get that about me, eventually I will tell you about my home life but right away the first day I meet you I feel is a bad time to ask. Plus, I never really could grasp the fact that people actually cared and wanted to care. So a lot of the time I would just be like no you don't need to know that. Until Kaitie came around. She just seemed like the kind of person who was laid back and not judge mental. My kind of person. Are friendship started instantly, but she still doesn't know about my "life". She gets everything else like the sports I play and things along those lines. But one of the reasons I haven't told her is that she just hasn't asked why I don't talk about it, which is perfectly fine with me. The whole thing is I would rather have someone ask about it than just be like well here it all is, and this is what I realized when I started being friends with Kaitie is that if they don't ask it really isn't something that has to be said. 

Even though I think a certain way about telling people about my family. One of the other things I have found myself doing is not telling people simple questions that they want to know? Some of them aren't even that hard to answer like, "what did you get on your science test" or "What did you do in science today?" Even though the questions are as simple as that I have strong views. Surprising right? I feel like people, even my friends need to know what I scored on any test that is something that is for my teacher and I to know and not the entire school. It is not a hard thing to live with but it annoys a lot of people because they would openly tell you anything you wanted to know, I am not that way. Also when people ask me what I did in certain classes a lot of times everyone is doing something different so I tell them what I did and then they yell at me when they had to do something different. I really don't have problems with answering my friends questions along these lines if they aren't going to tell everyone. Things that aren't your business or you are just going to complain about the answer later, I wouldn't ask me about it just for a fair warning.

Getting people to understand why you don't want to answer their somewhat "dumb" questions, is a task all in itself. Telling people why you are mad at them is just about the worst thing you could ever have to do. Sometimes friends and family don't understand why you bottle everything up; and sometimes I don't know the answer. Or at least I never really thought I did. Now that my best friend Chloe and I have gone through one of these arguments it is easier to comprehend. She didn't like the way I was treating her "I was acting like a best friend" she said. I can take that I can understand that, but why couldn't she just tell me. I understand now that it is harder to realize when you are truly mad at someone, or if you are holding a grudge over just about nothing. Which happened to be what this was about. Nothing major but we had some really awkward moments. Things that people do wrong to you, don't hold a grudge. Tell it to them to their face it is much nicer hearing about it straight from the person than from the people they have told.

Realizing why you never did the important things that hold a friendship together is one of the hardest things to do, but when you have friends there to help you along the way, it just makes your whole life a lot easier. I am still working on remembering not to hold grudges and also to not get so annoyed with peoples somewhat "dumb" questions. It is going to take some time and some effort, but it is nothing I can't handle with the help of some awesome best friends along the way.