on being a friend...

cue randy newman, pictures of cute puppy dogs snuggling, maybe a montage of people laughing and hugging and holding hands.

oh wait - that's not what i meant at all.

been thinking a lot recently about what it means to be a friend.  i realized i'd never really done any thinking about it for myself, and by that i mean that i've never decided what being a friend means to me in thought but also in action.  i spent years telling my kids in the backcountry what makes a good friend, but, per usual, i did not take the time to apply my spoken wisdom to my lived experience.

one of my students at aspen requested to me that he lead a group on friendship.  i was impressed that the kid had thought up a group idea and cared enough about it to lead it, and of course i found a good chunk of time to make it happen.  this young man had gone through incredible changes while in the program - he'd arrived an angry kid from a rural area whose drinking and challenging behaviors had led his mother to send him away.  i remember the first week i spent with him he only spoke when we asked him to.  weeks later i found myself sitting in a circle with him while he led the group in a moment of silence.  when we all opened the circle he pulled a letter out of his pocket and stared at it for a while.  he looked like he might cry.  we were all silent and rapt in our attention, our eyes on the top of his head as he bent low into his lap and started to tell us his story.

this kid had a friend - the kind of buddy you do everything with.  they were essentially brothers.  some years before our circle in the utah mountains my student and his friend went out with some others to drink and ride snowmobiles.  they were drunk and the night was amazing.  just before they had to be home for curfew his friend decided one more run across the field they were in was in order.  he zipped off and never returned.  when they found him he had crashed, his neck broken.

in the months that followed my student was by his friend's bedside as he struggled for his life, and later dealt with the intense reality of being paralyzed.  my student told me that in their conversations in the hospital that his friend had decided he would never drink again.  my student agreed that was a good idea, and entered into an agreement with his friend.  however, he found himself going out and getting wasted with other kids regularly, and began to feel guilty that he was lying to his pal.  his friend knew something was up and confronted him.  my student got angry, lied, and left.  he did not return after that.  he rationalized the situation by telling himself that his friend was a fool who deserved what happened to him.  he clearly could not handle things like drinking, and it was better that he did not.  my student told us that he blamed his friend rather than alcohol, and chose drinking over brotherhood.  the guilt became so intense that he could not think about his pal let alone see him.  the two had not spoken since that day.

then my student opened the letter in his lap and started to read.  the letter was from his friend.

when my student left for aspen his mother was alone and struggling with her own issues as well as the pain of what her son had become.  this was a last chance for my student - he'd been sent to aspen rather than juvenile detention, and if he did not do well there he would be sent to jail.  my student's friend, when he heard what had happened, called my student's mother on the phone and offered support.  she had spoken with my student's therapist and gotten permission to send my student a letter from his friend.

my student's friend shared that he still loved his friend, and that he wanted to help him because he knew that what had happened was about addiction.  my student's friend, wheelchair-bound, had moved into my student's house and was living with his mother so that she did not have to be alone.  my student's friend told my student that he was going to be there when my student got home, would support him in staying sober, and had forgiven him for choosing alcohol over friendship.  that said, he shared his hurt and disappointment in the situation, and told his friend that what he did was not OK.  the words in the letter were plain and direct - there was no romance in it.  this was the simplest declaration of brotherly love one could hear.  my student read us this letter with his head up, tears streaming down his face.  he did not care if this group of teenage boys saw him cry.

but then again - we were all crying too.

when the letter was over my student folded it back up and placed it in his pocket.  he looked at his peers and said 'that is a true friend.'  the silent nods of the group were more powerful than any words.

i share this story because it serves to me as a wonderful jumping off point for thoughts about friendship.  i have more friends than i do any other kind of relationship - more people than are in my family, more people than i've had lovers.  friendship is also cross-cutting.  i am friends with my family and my lovers.  i see it as such an important role - friend.  it means so many things.

it can get diluted.  we 'friend' people on facebook, and use the word as a placeholder to describe the person we are talking about or to ('let me tell you, friend!').  it is used to describe acquaintances as well as soul mates.  we tack on words or prefixes to modify it - boyfriend, girlfriend, best friend.  i see it in greeting cards, on picture frames, and in cut out block letters hanging in people's offices.  you know how if you say a word over and over again it loses its meaning?  sometimes i think that happens to 'friend.'

it's totally happening now.

what's hard about being a friend is that it is not all just happy songs and butterflies, laughter and chocolate cake.  being a friend means being a part of it all - the pain, the happiness, the love, and the harsh.  it means letting the relationship change as it needs to.  it means being willing to say the hard things rather than just what the other person wants you to say.  it means forgiving.  it means having boundaries.  it can be jealously or joy - hope or hurt.  one of the most profound people i worked with at aspen told me that sometimes the most compassionate thing a person can do is to tell you that you are full of shit.  the best friends i've ever had are willing to do that for me.

i think about this now as i live in a new town and am 'making friends' regularly.  i've met so many people in my life, and in the past 8 months there are so many new 'friends' that i am not sure i even can remember all of their names.  this is what i mean - what do i call someone i just met?  are they my friend?  am i theirs?  i wonder if it would not be a good idea for us to start creating new words to describe the relationships we have - kind of like how some native peoples have hundreds of words to describe different kinds of snow.  when you meet someone and like them you become 'friends,' but that is intensely different than the relationship i have with my friend whom i've known for 12 years and who is willing to tell me when i suck.  you don't tell new people you meet when they suck - that's not friendly then.

when do we cross the line into another level of friendship, and how can we create a language to describe it?

should we even do that, or is it better just to leave words out of it and let the feelings and actions dictate?

i want to be a good friend to those i've just met, and to those i have known forever.  whether or not i can describe it, i think friendship is immensely important.

what do you think my friends?