Nobody puts baillee in the corner

If you grew up in a small town like I did, you’re probably familiar with the phrase “fair weather friends.” For those of you who didn’t grow up in a town where evening movie tickets cost $4.25, and the mall resembled a prop from Dawn of the Dead, it refers to friends who are only there when it is convenient for them and/or when you are doing well financially or socially. When I first heard the phrase, I couldn’t have been older than 15, so I didn’t think there was any truth to it. As a 22-year-old, the naivety has worn off, and the BFF necklaces have long since broken.

If I’m being totally honest, I’m not a fan of this particular nomenclature. I believe people cycle in and out of your life with a purpose. Call me an optimist or an idiot (the line is very thin), but I wholeheartedly believe everything happens for a reason. I’ve had friends I thought would be in my life for a long time who I’ve lost touch with, but I’ve also randomly met people who became my best friends. One of my best friends of all time and I met when we were nine years old at the public library, and now she has two beautiful children I get to watch grow up. Another one of my best friends actually used to get on my nerves when he was a freshman, and now he’s one of my rocks and makes the best damn breakfast tacos of all time. I actually watched another friend grow up from the time she liked dressing up as Peter Pan and listening to Christian rock to the amazing woman she is today, and she’s become kid sister I always wanted. On the flip side, I have friends I grew up with and knew for years who are no longer a part of my life. That doesn’t mean I would trade all the fun times we had for anything, but rather our friendship simply wasn’t meant to last. Friendship isn’t a permanent thing; it’s a malleable term. It can fade into nothingness or evolve into something greater like a romantic relationship or a family in and of itself.

Childhood friendships sometimes don’t transition well into adult friendships, but those friendships helped shape you. Whether you realize it or not, you gained something from each of these relationships. On the positive end, I’ve learned to trust others and that it’s okay to ask for help. On the negative end, I’ve learned to not let others bring me down because of their personal insecurities, and unfortunately some people will take advantage of your kindness. Without those critical childhood and adolescent friendships, I wouldn’t have grown.

Later in life, college friends help you to realize your potential and to not be afraid to be yourself, and adult friendships show you how much people care and the beauty of staying in and just ordering pizza and drinking beer on a Saturday night. Regardless of which ring of friendship you currently find yourself in, appreciate it. Make it be something you look back and smile on and not something you roll your eyes thinking about later.

I guess the point I’m trying to make is you can’t force a friendship to last. When it’s over, it’s over. As Mean Girls taught us, you can still be civil when friendships end. You smile and nod and then keep walking. Your life is constantly changing and evolving, so your friendships need to reflect these changes. This means your childhood bestie might be at a different point in their life than you are in yours, causing a rift in your friendship due to a lack of commonality. You might part ways forever, or you might meet back somewhere in the middle. Either way, you sadly have to move on and see where life takes you. One of the hardest things is feeling tethered to a dying friendship, but eventually, you have to cut the strings and float on (brb, writing an indie song featuring that sentence because it definitely hasn’t been done before).

To wrap this up, I want to make it very clear I have a lot of great memories. This post isn’t meant as a guilt trip or rant but a fond and nostalgic tribute to my friendships of the past while honoring my amazing friendships of the present. Y’all are the wind beneath my wings. #blessed