A small meditation on friendship

Friends will text you because they saw something absolutely silly/ridiculous/bizarre that made them think of you.

Friends will tell you that "those pants are your worst enemy" instead of saying "no, that looks fine!"

Friends stick up for you behind your back.

Friends will buy a milk chocolate orange for you when they see one at CVS because they know you love them (but only the milk chocolate kind!) and that they are hard to find.

Friends will listen to your sob story for the thousandth time and say, "This crap is hard" instead of "Still? You're still thinking this?"

Friends sleep on your hideously uncomfortable futon.

Friends try really hard to convince you that you should listen to a new band/read this amazing book/watch Breaking Bad but understand that you probably won't because seriously: who has time to watch TV shows?

Friends will make your favorite food for parties they know you're attending.

Friends listen to you talk about mistakes you've made and say "perhaps not your finest moment" and forgive you. That way you can forgive yourself.

Friends make time for things both important and stupid.

Friends let you know when you're being too hard on yourself by saying, "Hey! Be nice to my friend! Yeah, that's you!"

Friends know you're on a diet but that you're totally going to want sour patch kids when you go to the beach, so they bring those AND carrots.

Friends ask their friends for help - emotional, physical, spiritual.

Friends respond to those calls for help by teaming up and facing the scary stuff but acting like it's not scary at all. They just sort of look at you from time to time to check in and it's like they are squeezing your hand without drawing attention to the fact that this might be scary for you. And at the end of the night they take the cookies with them to bring to the office because they know that sugar cookies should never go to waste.