True Friends

My Beautiful Girl is learning the trials and tribulations of friendship. Not sure of all the details, but she is having a Facebook fight with some of her "Friends"---capitalization mine. From the little I could understand from the rambling on the stairway, she made a teasing comment in front of someone and she knew before it even came out of her mouth that it was the wrong thing to say...or it was said in the wrong order. And then her "Friends" decided to tease, torment, and otherwise torture her about it, making her feel even worse for the mistake. In other words, Beautiful Girl is growing up...with all the pitfalls and bumps that entails.

So she posted on her Wall:

"I am tired of everyone on my back and judging how I act. I know who I am and who I want everyone to see but when I am around the people who judge and think they know me I can't always make myself shine through the facade I keep putting up in front of them. Its not fair for your own friends to only look at the surface."

In an effort to back up her, and remind many of her "Friends"---who are my former students---that they have been stupid and made mistakes on occasion as well, I posted in reply:

"True friends are the ones you do not have to put up the "polite shield" for...they know you and love you and will keep loving you through mistakes....kind of like your mom..."

I already have four "Likes" on it. Maybe I actually got some wisdom from this mom/teacher gig.

I know that the facade is necessary...to interact with society in a polite and orderly fashion. It is what keeps us from flipping people off and cussing people out when they make their mistakes. But there is more to people than manners.

But what I want to say to her, and to those "Friends," is so much more.

I want to say, growing up is hard. You start out just being yourself, pretty much through kindergarten and the beginning of elementary school, and then you figure out that these friend-people only like you if you say and do what they expect you to do. When you veer from the normal, they pounce all over you, and one misspoken comment can wreck your friendship, if that's what it was, for life. Eventually, you develop that "facade", as BG terms it, for being around people who do not know you...who do not know that person who thinks and feels and speaks and and loves without sorting and filtering and rewording.

I want to say....that is the value of friendship---those people you can say anything, do anything, be anything in front of and they will love you. Isn't that the meaning of love?

I am blessed with a husband who loves me like that...I can truly relax around him and I know whatever I say or do, he will love me. Even when (not if) I make my mistakes.

I am blessed with a best friend who has stood with me through some really rough times with medical issues when I was not the person I wanted to be...and still calls me friend.

I am blessed with old friends who came to visit us this past autumn and just were themselves...and let me be myself. And there was no coloring of the past on our conversation; it was just a couple sets of adults talking and listening. And laughing.

I am blessed with colleagues who are letting me figure out how to wear a new position and are so supportive every step of the way...both the ones in my department and the ones who are watching from the sidelines as I do my best.

I want to say to my daughter...find people like these. Find the people in your life who do not care about the facade, who will like and love and respect you for who you are, the deeds you perform, the decisions you make, the thoughts you have. Those are friends...without the quotation marks and the capital F.

She is worth it. We all are.