A friend recently told me that she doesn’t like the phrase “I’m always here for you” because no one can realistically promise always and forever. She prefers only a guarantee of friendship in the moment, with no promises for forever. At first, the idea bothered me. Did she not trust me to be there for her long-term? But once I gave it some thought, I realized how freeing and comforting it can be to lean on each other in the moment, without expectations or demands for the future. Most of us aren’t lucky enough to have a lifelong best friend, and the pressure to find someone who will become one is a pretty heavy burden when you’re getting to know people. What if we only expected kindness and connection for a little while?
But then, of course, it is difficult to open up and allow people to see the real you. It is so hard to let yourself love something when you know you’ll lose it. Why is that? Why are we all so hesitant to actually trust each other? Why do we refuse to let others in? Being trusted with the hard parts of my friend’s life is a gift that I cherish. Being allowed in is an expression of love. You cannot fully love someone or be loved by someone if you never let them see who you really are. But trusting people doesn’t come easily when you have been hurt before. Perhaps people turned away when you opened yourself to them, denied you when you asked for help. You learned to be much more independent and closed away because of it. Maybe you even resented friendships when they ended, even when the relationship came to a natural end and you parted ways fairly easily.
I think I have maintained this idea that something has to last forever to be worthwhile. It can be hard to risk yourself for a friendship when you don’t have a guarantee it’ll last. But my friend reminded me that something doesn’t have to be long term for it to be important. It doesn’t have to be forever to have meaning. The end of something doesn’t mean you made a mistake. And just because you grow apart or end abruptly doesn’t mean they’ll betray your confidence and spill your secrets for the next person. There are good people you’ll never see again who still care about you even though you no longer maintain a place in their lives.
Life is so fragile. It’s unpredictable and unsteady. It would be a shame to waste the incredible time we have been given on this amazing earth, afraid of true connection and resigning ourselves to following the status quo. What would the world be like if we were all genuine versions of ourselves, willing to be vulnerable both with our pain and our joy, and we gave our friends the opportunity to laugh and cry with us? What would the world be like if we didn’t shy away from our friends when they shared their pain and joy with us?
It’s risky. Of course it is. Not everyone will understand you. Not everyone will respect what you need. But there are people who will, and you’ll never find them by shutting yourself away. You have to try again. You’ll find your people.
And the thing is, you might lose them again. In one way or another, the people you hold dearest in your life will probably be a rotating cast over the years. That doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong, or you’ve messed up. It’s just the beautiful mess that life is.
So, to my friends, both the ones I cherish now and the ones I haven’t met yet:
I can’t promise you forever, so I won’t try. I don’t know what will happen tomorrow, much less ten years from now. But I can promise you right now. I can promise to hold space for you and your pain, your grief, your heartbreak, your healing, your hesitancy, your hope, your joy, your exuberance, your growth. I can promise I’ll respond with gentleness when you bare your heart to me and I’ll hold you when you shatter under the weight of something you should never have been asked to carry in the first place. I promise I’ll help you put the pieces back together again.
I promise that, in this moment, I will cherish your wonder when you watch the sunset over the lake or shake the blossoms softly from the mountain laurel. I promise that I’ll sing along when your favorite song comes on the radio and keep you safe from spiders when you fall asleep on the couch. I promise that I will be strong when you lean on me. I promise that I will trust you enough to share my own brokenness.
And maybe one day, you’ll be a stranger again. Maybe it won’t even take very long to forget why we grew so close to begin with. Even then, I promise to remember you with love, to keep your secrets and to keep loving the way you showed me how: to love fast and love fully, because the future isn’t promised.
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