5 Lesson 15 Years Of Friendships Has Taught Me.

Friends are great! They can be our home away from home in many respects. The family you chose, the sibling you actually prefer yada yada yada. This is not a post to praise the sanctity of the friendship, this a post reviewing the last 15 years worth of friendships what it taught me and what was learnt along the way.

Strap in it's a bumpy ride.

It all starts at 5, the age of the innocent (or if you're anything like me, the annoying, the whiny, the snotty) but I digress. Making friends at 5 was pretty easy. Of course there were a few unwritten rules to follow and this all depended on whether you were a girl or a boy. If you're a girl, its simple, boys are disgusting and are only to be looked down upon, not to be trifled with. If you're a boy, girls are disgusting and are only to... Oh well I guess its pretty much the same across the board.

When you're little making friends is just part of the fun of playtime. And lets be honest with ourselves here, the friendships we had when we were young were made of fragile yet stern stuff. One broken rule in a game of tig/tag could send you running to the teacher in fits of tears vowing never again to speak to the friend who wronged you. But then the bell would ring and you'd be forced to sit next to them in class and as if by magic, you'd be best friends again. Still it made a great home time tale for mum.

All this being said, I still have friends I have know since I was 5 and believe me everything mentioned above was not entirely hypothetical (but this is a blog about the shit that happens to me, so that was probably apparent right?)

As you graduate through the education system, you meet new classmates and start to call them friends (mainly because you have little choice you're in this together for the next 5 years...)

But sometimes despite being thrown together in twos and threes completely against your will, the niceties stick and you wind up being friends with people you thought you had nothing in common with. Similarly what can then happen is as you grow, you learn that having things in common isn't the irreversible glue that holds you together anymore.

But enough rambling lets get on with it shall we?

1. Wonkily built mud pies equals long lasting friendships.

This one probably won't apply to everyone but to those who have known the joys of building mud pies using that bucket and spade from the time you went to Blackpool and tried to no end to build a proper sandcastle worthy of Henry VIII, you'll also know what I mean when I say I probably owe my parents big time for the many times I would offer them up a slice (most likely a mound,) of mud 'pie' and watch with expectant eyes as they did their best to press it as close to their face as possible and make eating sounds. But the friends I made mud pies with and had other such fun home adventures, really helped to shape my imagination. Everything from scouting out a den in the areas behind our houses (or as we called it the backings,) to playing bull dog on the field next to the local pub and playing tig over the road when we were old enough. For me those wonderful summer days and the people I shared them with, hold a special place in my nostalgia bank.

2. Playground friendships are not classroom friendships.

Okay so you know how in primary school you would have the people you HAD to sit next to in the one classroom you stayed in all day and so it was more likely than not that you formed a sort of warped, love/hate bond with them. Things that involved sharing your new coloured pens or laughing at them when they painted their hands with PVA glue and pretended to be roughly the age of the school secretary, who had a severe skin shedding problem. You had fun together while you had to share a desk, however, when that bell rang to sound break times and it was time to hit the playground, all bets were off! It didn't matter if they were your best friend during English and Maths, playtime was sacred and so reserved for your 'real' friends. The friends you played stuck in the mud with or made scoobies with, those friends. And you never felt too bad because your classmate had their own thing going on too, they had friends that preferred playing in the sandbox to running around screaming bloody murder to avoid having to be 'it'.

And the same can also be applied to secondary school friends. If you were lucky enough to be one of the kids in school who had a never ending line of 'backup' friend groups (the ones you'd run to when you're main group were busy arguing, over who told who what about the other), then you were also most likely the type of kid who knew everyone in your year. Not to say you liked everyone, but you certainly knew the popular kids alongside your own friends and knowing the not so popular kids, but you resigned squarely in the middle. This meant that you and the most popular girl/boy in school could be thick as thieves while sat in History wondering why learning about European History pretty much only involved one country.

3. Filtering the bad ones out takes a while.

This is a lesson that is ongoing if you have standards for your friendships. I've spoken about this on here before, the idea that you should not have to settle for the crappy flaky friends anymore than you should put up with horrible bullying racist, degrading ones. Sorting out the bad eggs from the goods ones (getting a strong Willy Wonka's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory images here,) takes time to get right, you might have a close friendship with a really shitty person right the way through primary school, and feel like secondary school is a great way to break free of that person. Secondary school shits unfortunately are harder to shake off and that is mainly because although you are both older, you are going through a really weird time (also known as puberty) and its easier for you to be manipulated and mistake it for guidance and love.

Even as you get older and leave school, the bad friends keep coming around like the clap while the good ones often linger in the background, waiting for you to grow a backbone. Nevertheless its such an important lesson to learn when it comes to knowing exactly what you expect from your friends and what you expect from yourself as a friend. Your choice of friends it a reflection of who you are, you are the company you keep.

4. You learn how to lose friends.

Linking to the previous point, as I get older, I get so much better at no longer being friends with people I once thought would always be in my life. In a way it is sad because now it doesn't happen due to a horrific fight, time itself is the cause, conflict and the consequence. It used to be me fighting so hard to keep in touch with people who just had better things going on in their lives and the sooner I realised I was no longer a priority to them, they no longer mattered as much to me. Some people just always will matter to me though that's just the kind of person I am but I must say this,don't spend too much time and energy trying to pump life into a dead fish, at some point, you will run out of air.

5. Friendships are relationships to be cherished.

This is the final point I want to make about friendships. I may only have a handful of real friends in my life at this time but I cherish future, past and present friendships for being around when I needed them most and in some cases for what they taught me in their absence. Friends are amazing people who alongside family or sometimes in place of them, get you through times in life that are too hard to face alone (school is included in this), and in turn, you get to be there for them when they need you most. I love to laugh with my friends, I'm thankful that I don't have any friends I no longer speak to that I don't feel I could just reconnect with them some day if only to catch up. I'm grateful for all of the friends that I have had, do have and will have because honestly for me, they are my relief from myself.


Cherish your pals.

Love,

The Girl in Blue
xoxo.