Think about the person you go to when things get bad. Think about the one you go to when you’re hurting, sad, and feeling miserable.
How many people make that list?
The crazy thing about life is that we all have these people whether we can immediately call to mind their faces or not. We have them, because when things do get to the breaking point and you feel the boat beginning to capsize, we need someone we trust to help us balance out the boat and set up an anchor to stay stable. We don’t even know we’re doing it, but everyone does it every single day.
IT’s not about approval, or validation, or even desperation. It’s because these people are the only ones we know will come running when things go from ”I think I need to talk about this before I go insane,” to “I’m going crazy and I need help, please don’t let me down.”
The thing is, there’s a fine line between friends and family. There’s the in-between that comes after the ones we call friends that we like to have fun with and spend most of our time with outside of work and home and significant other (if that applies), and the blood relatives that don’t have a choice but to put up with your quirky problems whether they like it or not. These are the ones we know won’t laugh at or ridicule you for being vulnerable; the ones who don’t look down on you for your mistakes but try to show you a better way by not lecturing you on all the things you did wrong (unless you’re in denial—then it’s your own damn fault). They instantly and without thinking respond to you the same way you would to them if the roles were reversed, habitually offering your attention and help in whatever way they need without them asking.
I wanted to think of a new word and coin it in the new Websters dictionary with my face next to it, but the best I could come up with was…well it doesn’t matter. BFF is a tossed around term, but when you think about it, that’s a pretty narrow term. Because there’s no priority or preference when it comes to these individuals and you. There’s no Best Friend, there’s just a group of brothers, sisters, or how bout this one: people.
Oh, them? Those are my people.
Your people?
Yeah. They’re my people.
How’s that?
I don’t know. They just are. They get me.
And that’s just it: they get you. They understand you in a way that, outside of the family that has been around you since the ga-ga days of diapers and mayyyyy-be the person you share your bed with (I say maybe because this isn’t always the case), they get you like no one else. You click with them on a different level, communicate in a way that others look at and think is weird. Looks, laughs, in-jokes: these are the things we share with them.
And on cue, the reason comes from one of them during an adventure that illustrates it perfectly.
“You guys are different than any friends I’ve had before, and I can’t really figure out why,” I said.
“It’s because we don’t hide who we are. We don’t pretend, filter, or think when it comes to each other. We are who we are and that’s it. There’s no choice or thought about it; it just is the way it is for the sole reason that we feel comfortable doing it. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t.”
Like a light turning on in my head, I can see now who all these people are in my life. I see the ones I’ve become family with around me here, I see the ones I didn’t quite look at that way before from back home. I see the important ones that I didn’t realize were in that group before, and it feels good. It feels good because when you can be the same you that you are when no one is around, or when you’re around family, there’s a natural calm that takes over.
There’s no time frame on these things; sometimes it happens right away, sometimes it takes time. Sometimes it takes a tragedy to see who will step up, and sometimes it takes the opposite to see who are the leeches. But it always takes trust and honesty.
There was a day not long ago when I made a conscious decision to open myself to this. For a long time I had a lot of trust issues and they led to a filtered honesty that, while it was always honest regarding the important things, the insignificant things that I would think as meaningless seemed to get omitted or blatantly ignored. I decided that I needed to start somewhere with one person and be 100% honest. No sugar-coating, no defensive attacks, and no passively avoiding uncomfortable subjects for fear of judgment and ridicule (why the hell would you be friends with anyone who you think would judge and ridicule you for mistakes anyway?).
And that was the start. Now, I have a family that’s larger than my own almost. I have a home in a place I had never been before I stepped foot off the plane. I have people that will care about me and my life no matter the distance that comes with life. I have people I will never stop talking to, caring about or sharing my thoughts with, EVER.
I remember when I had one person, and when I had none. I remember when it started with my cousin sometime during the low point of my life, and after he had moved away when I couldn’t seem to, despite his attempts to get me to. I would tell people that I had one person, and that was good, because it was.
Then, amazingly, throughout a wonderful yet tough year, I have so many more. I see it like a team, almost. Team is a good analogy because it brings to mind a camaraderie that nothing else matches. There’s the losses, but there’s the wins. Some start the game, because they make up the go-to people when it comes down to it, but there’s still an entire team around you that you didn’t have before—a team that you spend the most important days of your life with. There’s no offending, no wondering, no eggshells. You live and breathe the bad days just as you celebrate the good ones.
And the funny thing is, the best teams out there, the ones who are really teams as opposed to a bunch of people looking out for themselves, are the ones who take the toughest losses and stick together. They’re the ones who look around at each other and trust that they will be there instead of the defensive way of bottling it up that most of us do every day because we’d rather not share it. We are too embarrassed. We think they’ll laugh. We don’t want them to think I’m a bad person.
The teams that will eventually come through it all together are the ones who allow the others to be there when they need them. They know that no one can get through life alone, and that everyone needs good people around them to get anywhere. We all lose, not one person. The best teams understand that without thinking or contemplating whether they understand at all.
They just know.
I’ve made some stupid mistakes before, I freely admit it (surprised?). I’ve pushed people away, trusted people I shouldn’t have, and lied to the ones who I should have trusted.
Within the past two months, I’ve come under some of the toughest money problems I’ve ever had, was struck with a pain so excruciating that it’s been called worse than childbirth by some, and had a surgery to relieve it that put me in more debt than I was in already, but also concluded with the worst thing a man can think of: having two threads pulled from the worst place possible to remove a 2 foot long stent that went straight to my kidney. Ouch.
But out of that hell, from that pain and hopeless despair I remember feeling when the pain would return, I have come out a new person. Somehow.
From being reduced to tears uncontrolled from such pain, from yelling out without thinking because I can’t help it, I feel a peace inside that I’ve never felt in my life. Every day I wake up, I sigh deeply and close my eyes to breath in the air and mentally take a moment to appreciate it.
Sigh.
That felt good.
So many things to list, it’s hard to do without rambling on like I already am. A woman I didn’t know brought me advil and water when I collapsed on the sidewalk where the homeless sleep and piss. I was on my back hyperventilating, and she took my 10 dollars and brought back medicine and change. I don’t even know her name, but I wish I did.
A friend I wasn’t very close with just prior to her visiting after she had moved away, became a part of that group by just being her. My two roommates are more brothers to me now than anything else. I might not think brother when they come to mind, but there’s a trust and respect there now that is just as if not more significant. Because they earned it. They earned it without trying, without wanting to or giving a crap about all this emotional babble that doesn’t matter to most. They are who they are, and for that alone, they are my bros. And there’s like my emotional twin, the one who somehow didn’t run for the hills from the weird guy in the car who was in such a happy mood (oh it’s funny now, but let me tell you how embarrassing that was). For someone who has probably more reasons to walk away than anyone else, she somehow understood me. Maybe that’s why I didn’t think it was weird; sometimes you just click and know someone is going to be a close person to you.
Trust me, it happens more often than you think.
Which brings me to my final thought: if I hadn’t opened my eyes to this trust I have in them that I know I will always appreciate and respect, I wouldn’t have people. I wouldn’t have a team. I’d be like Barry Bonds, scouring the world for a group who will take me in because no one wants a dude around who just wants to use them to further his own agenda. No one wants someone around who leeches the good from them and when they turn to you for help, there’s just nothing you can do. From the hellish pain and despair of insecurity, co-dependence, kidney-stones, there comes confidence, trust, and a relief I just wish you could experience without going through the pain.
Because after its passed, you know you just picked yourself back up from the worst possible thing you never knew could happen and instead of taking everyone you care about down, you let them bring you back up and show you that it’s possible if you let it be. And let it be, you must.
All it takes is one. One person to start it, then the momentum will take the rest. Sure, I could have looked like a fool, bruised and wounded from the pain of betrayal. But I wouldn’t know the good I feel now if I didn’t risk it. I wouldn’t have what I have if I didn’t allow myself to become vulnerable and see what happens.
To quote my favorite book, What Dreams May Come: Misery loves company, is what they say on earth. It should be Misery, in company, grows ever worse.
Likewise, my enlightenment has brought me to this: Happiness not only loves company, but needs it to thrive. The wonder that spreads with a smile, a laugh and a sincere pat on the shoulder that says, I got your back, is a wonder the likes of which nothing can overcome.
Damn is it awesome when I can give that intense feeling of good back to the ones who somehow led me to finding it.
“It’s cause we don’t hide who we are to each other,” Miriam said.
Here’s to that.
