Friends

12.21.04

I rant about my family here but never will the spotlight of wrath be turned upon my friends. They are solid gold, those people. The ones who hold me up, sustain me in good times and bad. They protect me and make me a better person simply by virtue of knowing them.

These are folks that I’ve known for many, many years. One from grade school. I met my best friend in 1985. One in 1979. Others in between. Our friendships are easy; never have we strained at the confines of the relationship. Nurtured, bound together by some unseen force, we have survived many different life experiences together.

It is something beautiful, spiritual, to know that there are people out there who love you for who you are and that you love them the same. You can do anything if you know that someone has your back. And you can dwindle and die in despair if there’s noone there to catch your soul when it plummets to the earth.

I’ve always thought that people who commit suicide just didn’t have any close friends.

I have many acquaintances, but those closest to me, my friends, had taken the place of the family I was born into. My adopted family’s relatives never really accepted me. Oh, on the surface. But not really. So from an early age I made my friends my family, and even though I married and have a new family, that is still true; they are my extended family.

My friends. Solid Gold.