As I write a toast to those who have held my hand throughout my many hardship journeys, I can’t help but wonder when someone will finally raise a toast to me. When will it be my turn to be a part of someone’s ‘real friends?’ because that’s what I am. I’m a real friend. 

   I tell myself ‘that’s high school’, but is it? Elementary, middle, and everything in between, I find myself losing people left and right. I had always questioned why. I wondered when someone would confirm it was my fault. Until I grew up. 

   I found out it wasn’t my fault. I had never done anything wrong. I never did anything for someone to leave me like I had never meant anything in their life. I watched as my ‘best friends’ of 6 years, 7 years, and 8 years kicked rocks, happily, on their golden brick path of walking out of my life. I care too much over the people I gifted my rosiest heels to, as they walk all over me with the shoes I gave them as a present. 

   What had I done? What did I do wrong to be someone’s second choice, better yet, someone’s last choice? These are questions I could never get out of my head, until I gifted myself the answers. I gave them my years, my commitment, my loyalty,  my truth, my soul. Yet, it was never enough. In every friendship, I always considered it as a relationship, and instead of there being a one-way infidelity with ‘the other woman’ I struggled with ‘the other friend.’ 

   What is ‘the other friend?’ The other friend is the girl you should be most afraid of. She’s the friendly thief who will steal your best friend from you. She’s the one that your ‘best friend’ will allow to steal from you. In the end, you never win, the thief succeeds, and now you’re just there. 

   Real friends help you build up your strongest wall, they don’t do everything they can to make it fall. Every ‘best friend’ I treasure turns into someone who lacks what they vow to promise. I swear on pinkies and they swear on silver tongues. For whatever reason, when I collect all my Pokemons, I find myself wanting to be their shell. I protect, and sometimes I think I do it too well that they begin to resent my perspective on our relationship. Because that’s what friendships are. They are relationships. 

   As I get older, I transition from resenting myself, and the time I provided to the ungrateful and begin to resent the person. I don’t loathe, I frown. I frown on what we could have been, what should have been, and what I wanted us to be. But they’re all lessons. Lessons I wish I didn’t need every time I gained a ‘trustworthy’ friend. I learned it’s not conceited to finally admit that I am not a bad friend and I never was.

   How do I know? I provide loyalty, comfort, security, protection, consolement, and pinky promise kisses. Do I really need to go on with my list? These listings are what make a real friend. These are traits that aren’t hard for somebody to be, yet it’s hard for somebody to be these things for me. I care as delicately as a pedal falling from their most favorite bouquet that I gifted them. 

   I knew one day I would find someone who would not only appreciate these traits of mine but my time. My very existence, my presence. It would all, finally, be enough. And I have. I’ve found my crowd, now me and the old friends I’ve had, have dispersed, and we split the pole willingly. 

   Lessons are like trees. As seasons go by, seasons being friends, and the leaves fall, the leaves being the friends you’ve lost, they grow back. You lose some and you gain some. You shed off the old, shriveling leaves that were begging to be shaken off and you grow new, colorful ones. 

   Here’s a toast to my real friends. My friends who check up on me, my friends who reassure me, my friends who provide loyalty, my friends who enjoy the sound of my laughter. My friends who express their pleasure in my growth, my friends who are fond of my presence, my friends who aren’t envious of me but proud of me, my friends who take pride in our relationship, my friends who always take my side. Dear reader, I hope you find your real friends. I hope you pick the right team, the real team. I would never wish the struggles that were laid upon my friendship journey on anybody else. I hope you read this and realize there is hope and there are real friends out there, like me.

   Now I walk on my own golden brick path, arms linked with my own friends, my real friends.