Brain Fart 5: My Idea of a True Friend

**Originally written for my UWP 1 class blog**

Everyone has different ideas about what a "true" friend is. Is it someone who is always there for you? Is it someone who knows you backward and forward? Is it someone who you trust beyond all others? What is a "true" friend?

I was chatting with one of my closest, truest friend today. I was talking with him about his troubles, and I was having a very hard time with it. I just kept thinking, "Why can't I understand? I don't understand him, he is so...complicated!" At that moment, I made a realization. The only people I ever think are complicated or complex are people who I'm really close with, my "true" friends. "Well, that doesn't make sense," I thought to myself, "why is it the that the people most complicated to me are my closest friends? It should be the other way around!" But...maybe not.

We, as individuals, know that we ourselves are very complex creatures. We know our own life's story. We know what experiences we have been through, and how they have shaped our thought processes and personalities. Because so many things happen in life, these experiences create very complex personalities and thought processes. And, very often, we hide many of these complexities. We're embarrassed by them, are too hurt to share them, and/or think they won't accept them. In a way, it's very much like wearing clothes. We wear clothes to hide parts of ourselves that we're not sure we want other people to see, because we don't trust them to be able to handle our complexities. However, sometimes we find those true friends that we can shed our metaphorical clothes in front of and say, "Here I am, all of me," and trust them to accept us anyways.

However, we tend to forget that other people, our friends, are just like us--real people with real life experiences. We see them, and say, "Okay, that's them. That's all there is to see." We forget that these friends of ours are just like us, complexities included. However, we become closer and closer, until reaching "true" friend status, where we both start to trust each other enough to show our full "naked" selves. Then we start to realize that, yes, they also have lives. They have been living lives just like we have, have had experiences just as we have, been hurt and gone through hardships just as we have, and have been having their thought processes be shaped according to those unique experiences. Then, these life experience-shaped thought processes start leaking into our conversations, and we start seeing them as complex beings, just like ourselves. We may not always fully understand them, because their experiences are different from ours. However, if they are "true friends," you learn to accept that anyways, just as they learn to accept you, too, complexities and all.

So, I think "true" friends are the people that you acknowledge as actual, living people. You acknowledge that they have been living complex lives, just like you, and you accept them anyways (and vice versa), complexities and all.