March 28, 2021
Happy birthday, to my old friend.
I’ve made some good ones over the years. Kindred spirits. People who get you.
You treasure each and every one. A friend can part ways with you, and then years later reconnect as warmly as if it had only been a moment.
If you’re lucky in this life, you’ll have a friend or two. Most people realize how hard it can be to maintain a romantic relationship. Almost nobody ever mentions how much goes into maintaining a friendship. It’s selfless, and you can’t ever take it for granted.
Hopefully, one day my romantic relationship will also be a powerful friendship.
I do think of us as friends… embers borne from the same fire, blazing forward on two different paths, destined to meet again after we’ve branded our names onto the earth.
People also don’t mention that though you usually only have one spouse, you can acceptably have as many friends as you can handle. It takes just as much effort and consideration to vet potential friends as marriage partners.
Not everybody knows how to be a friend. But, when you find each other, you just know.
I once asked her what qualifies two people as friends. She replied, “They talk to each other.” That’s all. Sometimes something so simple can seem so hard.
And, maybe it is. There’s so much more stopping us from just talking to each other, isn’t there? It takes extreme heat and overwhelming pressure underneath the surface of the earth for the formation of diamond. Maybe we have to get through everything the world throws at us before we can just “talk”.
Every year we get closer. We are diamonds of the future. Happy birthday once again, Nell.