"An Anyway Friend is the one person in your life who no matter what they say or do, no matter what they’ve been through with you, they love you anyway. No matter how old you are or your responsibilities, if you have love, real unconditional love, you can make it." -Sam Bennett (Yes, this is a quote from Private Practice, get over it!)
Everyone has an anyway friend. The point of an anyway friend though is to be their anyway friend! I have felt at times that I don’t need any more friends, that I have enough friends, but the truth is, you can never have too many friends. Too often we are tempted to walk away from friendships over stupid disputes. I have walked away from friendships over misunderstandings, and you know what, the majority of the time the only person that I was hurting was myself, and I could live with that. It was easier to live with that then to let that friend hurt me or to know that my actions were hurting them, but no matter who’s hurting, it’s not okay. I’ve observed that the majority of the time that friendships end is when one person has feelings for the other person that are more than just friends. It’s a lot easier to talk about things when feelings of real interest aren’t in the mix. We’re all human and can relate to the theory that when there is interest involved the stakes are higher, and when the stakes are higher that means that we can be hurt more. For me personally, that translates to me being more standoffish, less likely to communicate fully. Some people are able to dive right in and share more and have more faith and trust in the other person. I don’t really understand that, but to each their own! A friend of mine has made the comment that it’s our loved ones that hurt us the most. While it’s true, I hate it! I can’t believe how selfish we can be that we don’t see how much we hurt people. It’s too easy to snap at our family and our friends and play it off as, “they understand, they’re just seeing the real me”. Shouldn’t the real us also have the courage to apologize and talk things out with them? Shouldn’t we have the patience with our loved ones that we hope they have with us? I’m not saying that I’m perfect, I’m sure that many of you reading this know how UNperfect I am, but what I am saying is that is it so much to ask that we all try to do a little bit better each day for our Anyway Friends? Let’s face it, one of those Anyway Friends will become your spouse, your companion, your partner for life. So we better learn how to do our best by them now.
