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Am I your friend? Well it’s kind of difficult to say: I’m not sure I have the right words to convey what friendship is to myself, even those friendships I know well. Maybe it’s easier to express in pictures or music or smells or tastes or poems or memories. (I’m not very good at expressing using those means either, so I only imagine it’s possible). Anyway, here goes, with words: I’ve had, and still have, friends and I certainly count you as one of them. Each friendship has their singularly different origin: Those I remember from long ago when life seemed so much simpler, yet emotionally dramatic (for at least five minutes). Those from teenage years when life was so complicated and we were going through things ten times more dramatic than anything anyone else could possibly gone through, for weeks on end. Those who shared when we couldn’t share with those who knew us in more innocent ways, or when appearance and status mattered more than our authenticity or exploration of life. Those who survived the fallings out and who would remain there for a future together. Those who didn’t, but their memory lingers. But burgeoning self-consciousness turns a colossal, judgemental eye, on the question of what’s going on there. Who do I sincerely count as one? Do you genuinely counts me as one? And slightly ahead in time, who will become a friend in the future, and on what basis? Are the circles of friends reflective of our need for them, their need for us, or both? The tie that binds seems difficult to identify: For this friend, I’d do this; for this other friend, no way. (Both will be on the invites to a party though). For this friend: an invite to hours of chatting; for others: invites only as part of a group. Friendship changes: I’m not there, they’re far away; we feel guilt and loss; we meet new people who make us laugh more or who we share more things with; we feel left out; we fall out sometimes; we get on easily; we share trivial and important things; we get ill; we misunderstand; we regret; we lose one another. The slippery word “friend” beholds both of us, both our selves at this point in time. Ironically, in the easiest and most selective of relationships, there is considerable effort and investment and emotional enmeshment – however few or many friends we have. You remember pieces of me, and I remember pieces of you. Together we have reinforced and mirrored one another, our previous selves, in shared thought and spirit. And all of them are important because of sharing something small, unremembered, profound or deeply meaningful that resides in my memory somewhere; something for which I’m grateful. And I count you as a friend in this way too. A keeper of me. What, then, when paranoia takes hold? When self-doubt hits a new high and confidence a new low? When fear makes our world a terrifying place to live in? When we’re king of the world and the world can’t keep up and keeps holding us back? When people have damaged our relationships with others before we even had a chance to feel love? When what’s going on seems so much bigger than both of us; when we feel powerless to do anything about it; when we question our importance to one another, that surely others are better, have more meaningful relations? When we feel our limited encounters with trust and understanding are too small? When our illnesses change who we are, yet we continue to hammer out all our nuances within our continually negotiated relationships? When we feel powerless in these forces of change? When the first response to pain is to run away? We might lose one another through a period of distress. And then I remember that thing… Through all the malaise and chaos, loss and sadness, fear and worry, that life and experience constantly surprises us with, something has existed and continues to exist between us. That thing that inoculates against a loss of self, that helps makes sense, that maintains a hope for who we are and will be. That space in which we share something, often unspoken; because it’s about you, and because it’s about me, it’s “us”. A sense of belonging and acceptance. Not in principle, or definitive, but in love. Expressed between people who, at any other time, in any other location, in any other circumstance, would have been strangers. Little relation, no memory, an absence, an isolation, a void. For me, if I can only be there when times are good; then that is a mirror I find difficult to look in to. (But that might be a mirror someone else can only look in to). So I remain, remembering your importance to me. The ways you have changed my experience, my self, in ways I hadn’t realised until I thought about it. The obvious and the subtle. The way you accepted me for who I am, and how you helped me belong. So I to try and say the right thing, to do the right thing, listen, make the drinks, do no harm, listen, share, or just be. And yes, now, more than ever, when it gets tough, I am your friend. And you are mine too. Let us not let the mere strangeness, and tragedy, of human existence get in our way
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AuthorThe Kick Back Club is a collection of written works on friendship and mental health recovery Archives
February 2016
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