How do you define ‘friend’?
Someone you have known for a long time?
Someone you can pour your heart out to any time of the night and day?
Someone who shares common interests?
Someone you just met or haven’t actually met face to face?
All of the above?
Does it matter?
A friend is someone you feel you can call a friend for whatever reason.
A friend is someone you feel you can love, or someone you do love.
Not love in the romantic, heartfelt way that is normally associated with a partner, but love that you feel you can extend to anyone.
But just how often do you tell your friends that you love them? How often do you just say ‘I love you’, to your friends?
I don’t very often, but I’m gonna give it a damn good try from now on. Okay, granted, this might not be quite so easy to say to my male friends, but to the female ones, it’s gonna happen. And no, not in the slushy way, but if any of you are reading this, and you should know who you are, then prepare yourselves. If the male ones out there are reading this, consider it done (baby steps guys, ok?). Love makes the world go round. Love should be able to make it stop turning, just for a brief moment, so we can look at each other and be aware of the wonderful thing we share – a love for who we are. So why the hell don’t we extend that to those around us as well? The world wo’n’t stop turning, and we wo’n’t tell everyone around us that we love them, but we can tell our friends.
I can’t credit anyone with this, cos I don’t know who said it, but:
There are no strangers, just friends you haven’t met yet.
So find a quiet moment, sit your friend down and tell them. Tell them how much you appreciate them. Tell them how much they mean to you just being there, just being themselves. Tell them you love them. It’s hard. It wo’n’t seem natural. What the hell, just do it.
I’m going to.