Reverb12 Day Fifteen: Friendship

tyunglebower ♦ December 15, 2012 ♦ Leave a comment

What was it like for you to be a friend to others this year?  Did you rekindle an old friendship?  Strengthen a current friendship?  Make friends with someone you didn’t think was “your type?”

It would be difficult to get into too much detail about how I was a friend this year without breaking confidences and identifying people who want to remain anonymous. I can say in a broad sense, however, that a particular friend of mine has been going through a rough time this year, and, if I am to believe them, I have been able to be a force for good in their life as they navigate certain mazes.

I’ve known this person for years. Sometimes it would be years between times we would see or speak to each other, but a bond remained. That much was clear when we did speak.

This year we began to communicate far more often as their complicated situation descended upon them. I was moved when I learned that I was one of the few people (at that point in time) to be told about what was going on. Not because I value secrets or think it makes me special. But because it is indicative of the type of trust that exists between two people when they value every aspect of one another. When you know they have you back should it ever be needed, and that you have theirs.

Which I did in this case. But I did nothing spectacular, other than being there, and letting them know I loved them. (Though in this world, it may be.) I merely provided for them what they, as the beautiful person they are, had provided for me in the past. When despite their own situations, they offered me support.

Through this, I feel that our already strong friendship got even stronger.

It’s the lack of heroism in my entire relationship that makes it all the more moving to me. For while I would go to great heroic lengths for this person, I have never been asked to do so. It is the nature of just being present. Asking how they are. Seeing them when I can. It reaffirms that it’s really the simplest, everyday things that build the strongest of bonds between two people, not the grand, earth shattering gestures. Sometimes we give such moments to others and sometimes they give them to us. But great love can be shown in tiny moments, and I have felt privileged to be both on the giving and receiving end of such things with this very important person in my life.