Thank God You're Here; An Ode to My Friends

Photo by Summertimesadness

I’m not the most sentimental of people, but of late I’ve realised I’m in love. With my friends. A million movies have been made about friendship, even if the friend only gets a look in when the husband leaves. I, like most people, think I have better friends than you do. Unless you happen to be friends with me, you lucky bitch. Friends are like foods. You have all different kinds and they are good for different occasions. You have work friends and school friends and uni friends and friends who catch your train, friends you’re only friends with because they have hot guy friends, friends of your family and of course, your very best friends. I guess your close friends are like ice-cream in this strange metaphor. You feel like them most of the time.

It’s weird because, unlike romantic relationships, there is no set time you begin a friendship. You don’t anxiously await a relationship request with a friend on Facebook, or feel the need to tell everyone they like you. You just call ’em up and go egging together. Friendships can start over anything and everything. Does someone become your friend when they hold your hair back in the toilet while you vomit up half a bottle of vodka and half a year of suppressed emotions? Or is friendship cemented when they throw a shoe at someone they think might hurt you? When we were little we knew someone was our friend when they sat next to us in class, or let us copy their homework. Nowadays, friendship rites of passage still might include copying, but they are far more varied and harder to pin down.

For me, Facebook has introduced a whole new realm of friends. According to profile, my friendship net is far wider than I had ever realised. I have several male friends in Turkey who, if you judged by likelihood to talk to me on chat, are some of my closest pals. Most of the time friends are simply there to make you laugh. They’re there to agree with you that some bitch shouldn’t have pushed in front of you, worn your dress or slept with your boyfriend. They’re there to tell you if something is on your face, hang out with you so you don’t look like a creeper and go to yum cha with you so you can afford to have more plates. Like winter weight or a shameful knowledge of most of the words to Justin Bieber’s ‘Boyfriend‘, love for your friends can creep up on you unexpectedly. Somehow certain people go from someone you’d like to see at a party to someone you care about as much as your family.

In the words of two of my best friends (one of whom probably took hers from somewhere else) – friendship are like peeing yourself; other people can see it, but only you can feel the warmth. And the more you drink the more you have.